67 pages • 2 hours read
Clint SmithA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
As Smith writes about his experience of the historical sites, he uses light, dark, and shadow to allude to knowledge/understanding, oppression and breaking, and mystery with the hope of understanding, respectively. Furthermore, it is sometimes the interplay of light, dark, and shadow that reveals how Smith processes the sites’ exhibits and his overall experience.
Light as a symbol of knowledge and understanding first appears in the chapter on Monticello. For example, Smith writes, “A blade of light cut through the open doorframe of what may have been the Hemings’s living quarters. […]” (31). He describes a “whisper of sunlight squeezing through” (34) small openings in the roof of the Monticello slave cabin. He also notes the “splashes of light” (49) between leaves and branches on the path to Jefferson’s grave. Smith’s descriptions of these sparse amounts of lights connote the understanding he is beginning to gain about the experiences of enslaved people at Monticello. They are sparse, perhaps, because while the site has taken efforts to correct their narrative on slavery and Jefferson’s relationship to it, there remains the difficulty of recreating the experiences and personhood of the enslaved people. Furthermore, as Jefferson’s duality and complexity remains the central subject around which the narrative orbits, the understanding of enslaved people’s experience remains secondary to understanding Jefferson.
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Books on U.S. History
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Memory
View Collection
National Book Awards Winners & Finalists
View Collection
National Book Critics Circle Award...
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Popular Book Club Picks
View Collection
Popular Study Guides
View Collection
The Best of "Best Book" Lists
View Collection