The Known World

Like Henry, Moses is ambitious, eager to maximize his power. As an overseer, he works the slaves hard, but he himself works hard. He keeps himself separate from the other slaves, and the opening image of the book shows him all alone. But unlike Henry, Moses does not find success: His efforts end up stripping him of all power. He has no mentor or father figure to teach him how to succeed in the world of slaveowners. He doesn’t realize that it is impossible for him ever to cross the line from slave to slaveowner. Hunger for power blinds him and prevents him from seeing the trap he is falling into. In the final image of the book, Moses is again alienated, hobbled and blinded by any light. Ironically, his name conjures the biblical Moses, who led the slaves out of Egypt; this Moses, too, led others (his wife and child) on an exodus to freedom, but he was unable to enter the Promised Land himself. There is nothing redemptive in the exodus, as his actions have doomed him.

All his life, John has wanted to do the right thing. He assumes the right thing is the lawful thing, and he does not question the boundaries of the law. To his credit, he attempts to treat white and black slaveowners equally. On the other hand, he sees nothing wrong with hunting humans, as if chattel, to return them to their owners. 

At first, John understands his father’s desire not to be tainted by the evils of slavery. But John’s job as sheriff leads him to believe that the outlines of the law conform perfectly to the outlines of morality. If he sees any conflict—between his distaste for owning slaves and his job to uphold the legality of slavery—he frequently seeks justification in the Bible. Also, he knows that he will be out of a job if he is not effective in dealing with runaway slaves; the previous sheriff was removed because he could not deal with the problem. Still, John tries to be “righteous” and fair in his enforcement of the law. John wants to apply the law fairly for everyone, unlike his cousin Counsel, who has no desire to help Mildred when she reports the disappearance of her husband, a free man under the law. 

Fern Elston teaches free black children whose parents can afford her tuition. She is also a slaveowner: She and her husband own 12 slaves. When Anderson Frazier asks her if she felt any conflict in owning people of her own race, whom he refers to as family, she protests that he has misunderstood the situation completely. Owning slaves was not at all like owning family, she asserts. However, she does not share her true feelings with Frazier—which is that “ the gambler who lost his leg would change everything and she was never to see the world the same again” (73). Fern’s attraction to Jebediah Dickinson flies in the face of her beliefs; before he arrives, she did not want “to mingle with ‘any slave that was not house broken’” (73). She must reevaluate her beliefs when she becomes attracted to a slave whose dark skin she has been trained to avoid. His refusal to be bound by the manners that have bound Fern’s world both baffles and intrigues her. His correction of her misspelling of the word “manumit” in his free papers shows his learning may even exceed hers. 

As a teacher, it is Fern’s job to instill in her students the values of those black people who are both free and wealthy, and so William Robbins turns to her to teach Henry how to fully inhabit his role as master. But, in the end, Jebediah Dickinson makes Fern question her dehumanizing beliefs about proper behaviors between masters and slaves.

Caldonia has a strong desire to believe in the idea that a slaveholder can be benevolent toward one’s slaves. When Henry dies, she tries to persuade herself that he was a kind and loving master, even though he rationed slaves’ food and would beat slaves who “needed” it. Adrift after Henry’s death, Caldonia turns to Moses, allowing him to become intimate with her because he reinforces the image of Henry as a benevolent slaveowner with his clearly fictionalized stories about the past. Despite her mother’s fears, she does not free the slaves but instead becomes the new slaveowner. But she too wants to believe that the slaves see her as benevolent. Once slaves begin escaping, she realizes that they may not see her as she hoped. She is especially shocked at the disappearance of Priscilla, “a woman who seemed to adore her” (317). 

In the end, Caldonia is more like her mother than her father in her desire to protect her “legacy.” When Calvin writes a letter attempting to explain his guilt over this legacy, she is unable to understand his feelings, taking comfort simply in the fact that her brother has traveled safely to Washington.

Alice is characterized as insane by the other characters, who assume that a kick in a head by a mule when she was a child rendered her crazy. Not until the end of the book does the reader discover that insanity was a mask Alice adopted to gain freedom. The mask allowed her to wander the plantation at will all night, since no one suspected that she was really planning her escape. Only Moses is able to eventually figure out her true nature, and when he demands that she escape with his wife and child, her manner immediately transforms, showing her to be practical, tough, and ready for what is necessary to escape to freedom. She does not appear again until the end of the book, when she has again transformed, this time into an artist, Alice Night. She has created two mixed-media pieces that capture Calvin’s attention. One is of Manchester County and the other is a recreation of the plantation with everyone who lived there, except for herself, Priscilla, and Jamie.