'Oral Tradition In Margaret Walker's Jubilee'

Margaret Walker’s novel Jubilee focuses on the life of a slave girl by the name of Vyry who gains her freedom at the end of the Civil War and sets out with her children, Minna and Jim, and husband, Innis Brown, to make a new life for their family in the Reconstruction Period. Walker’s awareness of the southern plantation tradition is made clear throughout Jubilee in the way that she debunks the negative tropes placed on the shoulders of African Americans by the nostalgic white writers of the South; Walker also incorporates her knowledge of black oral tradition by way of small snippets of text on every page which marks the start of a new chapter in the text.
The first section of Jubilee covers the antebellum years, before the Civil War ripped …show more content…
Plantation tradition usually upholds the Master’s orders in a place of highest priority, another trope that Walker breaks in Jubilee. Shortly after Lucy ran away the second time, Master John had “plainly told [Uncle Plato and Uncle Esau] and Mr. Grimes that they were not to go into the fields anymore” (Walker, 132) because they were too old for that kind of hard labor. Grimes, the overseer, went against Master John’s decision again and ordered them both back out into the fields. “In less than an hour in the blazing sun the two old men had collapsed in the fields, overcome by the heat and unaccustomed exertion” (Walker, 133). Uncle Plato and Uncle Esau took refuge in an abandoned slave cabin that was burned down while the two men were sleeping. “There was a big mix-up over whether [Grimes] actually ordered his guards to burn that particular house or another” (Walker, 134), but Master John and the rest of the slaves did not believe that it was an accident. After these usurpations and his wife Salina’s casual brushing-off of Master John’s claim to authority on the plantation, Caline observes that “his say-so don’t amount to nothing” (Walker, …show more content…
When Brother Zeke first speaks of God sending them a Moses, that chapter’s quote is “When Israel was in Egypt’s land / let my people go / Oppress’d so hard they could not stand / let my people go” (Walker, 18). Walker would also write Aunt Sally singing when she was working in the kitchens of the Big House. “When Aunt Sally was deeply troubled, she opened her mouth and raised a real wailing song over her cooking” (Walker, 71). If slaves ever spoke out against their masters, they would face extremely harsh punishment and perhaps even death. Most of the people in the Big House would not recognize the singing as Aunt Sally expressing her discontent, but rather see it as just making noise. The oral tradition offers a freedom of expression that is disregarded and seldom if ever over-analyzed by the white oppressors they were singing out