Amos Fortune, Free Man

Amos Fortune, Free Man makes many biblical references that reinforce Fortune’s Christian faith and establish the novel’s emphasis on Christian values. A related theme is The Importance of Patience for African Americans Desiring Freedom. The book makes particular reference to Old Testament biblical figures and images, such as Moses and the Israelites, which evoke the long journey to freedom. In Chapter 4, when Fortune is finally freed, the narration states, “He raised his head from the blossoming tree to the blue sky above and the thought of Moses came into his mind, of Moses who stood upon Mount Nebo seeing with his eyes the land that his feet might not tread upon” (69). Fortune sees similarities between himself and Moses as men who embarked on new journeys in old age. This quote refers to Moses’s inability to enter the land that God had promised to the Israelites (Moses was forbidden from entering because of his disobedience). In contrast, in Chapters 5 and 6, Fortune is able to enter his promised land—Jaffrey—and start fresh with his family.

Fortune admires a mountain in the area near Jaffrey and Keene and kisses the soil when he sees the mountain, recalling his kissing the ground during the At-mun-shi people’s harvest celebration in Africa. This instance is also a reference to multiple biblical moments, including Moses’s encounter with God in the burning bush on Mount Horeb in the book of Exodus. In that encounter, God tells Moses to remove his sandals because the ground he is standing on is holy. When Fortune kisses the ground, it equates Jaffrey with holy ground. Mountains often appear in the Bible at crucial spiritual moments, such as when Jesus spends a night in prayer on the Mount of Olives before being arrested, tried, and crucified. Fortune’s admiration as he looks at the mountain references this and other biblical moments that serve as turning points in someone’s life.

Another reference to the life of Jesus Christ is when Fortune arrives in Keene and cannot find a place to stay. The text reads, “When Amos Fortune reached Keene, he found stabling for Cyclops at the Inn, but no lodging for himself. He shared the stall with his horse” (86). This is evocative of the nativity scene at the birth of Jesus, where his parents, Mary and Joseph, could not find lodging at an inn and had to stay in a manger with farm animals. There are further biblical references in Chapter 5, such as Fortune’s comparison of himself to Joshua, who led the Israelites after Moses’s death, as well.

While the narrative has been primarily centered on Fortune’s perspective, in Chapter 6, it pauses momentarily on Violet and then on Celyndia. In these brief moments, the narrative explores their relationships to beauty and race: Both Violet and Celyndia privilege whiteness and must be reminded of the beauty of the color brown: “White was the most beautiful color [Violet] knew. Yet when she would say that to Amos he would remind her that the brown of the earth from which the flowers came was a good color too” (96). While the quote does not refer explicitly to skin color, the juxtaposition of white and brown implies a racial subtext. This quote suggests that Violet struggles to love her brown skin and has internalized the ideologies of white supremacy—“[w]hite was the most beautiful color she knew.” This reading is further supported by Violet’s missing “the comfort of a big house and the companionship of many servants and slaves” (95), indicating that she harbors some nostalgia for her previous life as an enslaved person.

Young Celyndia has a similar struggle: “She had wanted a sawdust dolly with a white china face and pretty pink cheeks, but she loved this one because Amos had made it for her” (96-97). Celyndia’s desire for a white doll demonstrates, like her mother, a valuing of whiteness over brownness/Blackness. In both these instances, the text leads the reader to consider the interplay between race, gender, and beauty. As a woman and girl respectively, Violet and Celyndia must contend uniquely with the way women’s beauty standards idolize whiteness, excluding Black women from the category of beauty. Yates addresses this gendered racial self-hatred by having Fortune, a Black man, encourage both of them to love and accept their Blackness. Yates’s choice to use a man to correct Violet and Celyndia’s internalized racial self-hatred perhaps falls short in representing the full spectrum of feelings that African American women have historically had toward race and beauty.