Toni Morrisons A Mercy (2008) Teaching Notes

Introduction:
A Mercy, published in 2008, joins Toni Morrisons celebrated body of work
exploring the African American experiences of slavery and freedom. But in A
Mercy, Morrisons handling of those issues is more multifaceted than in her
previous novels. Morrison goes back to the beginning of slavery in America, in
the late seventeenth century, a period during which America was far more
diverse and complex than is generally imagined today. The novel includes
Portuguese, Dutch, English, Native American, African, and mixed-race
characters, all vying for a place in this new world. Neither religious freedom
nor religious tolerance is a given, and while the Southern colonies are clearly
strongholds of slavery, the North is by no means an innocent bystander.
Diseases such as measles and smallpox run rampant. Nevertheless, there is
an Eden-like quality in the beauty and richness of this new world, along with
many decencies that transcend the evil elements.
The novels main narrator, Florens, is a slave born in America of an African
mother, originally owned by Portuguese plantation owners. Through an act of
mercy, she becomes part of the household of the Vaarks, who are a farming
and trading couple. The household includes Florens, one Native American
slave, one foundling of mixed race, and two male indentured servants. Each
of these characters is given a voice in the story as well. The voices combine
to form a narrative that allows the reader to see the history of the characters,
as well as their present circumstances, and that allows the plot to move
forward as a kind of mosaic. The action in the story is framed by the journey
of Florens, a journey that is both literal and figurative.
Because of the complexity and diversity of the setting and the characters,
many themes emerge in A Mercy. Morrison explores the concepts of freedom
and slavery in every man (and woman), not just within the context of the
African American experience. She examines the power of literacy in a world in
which literacy is by no means a right, connecting it to freedom and personal
autonomy. Biblical themes are present in the work, with America as the
Garden of Eden and America as the Promised Land, both perhaps being
precursors of the modern American Dream. The religious intolerance of the
Old World is recast in the New World, allowing an exploration of the myth that
America is the land of religious freedom. The variability of love is a theme
demonstrated through the relationships in the novelrelationships between
mother and child, between husband and wife, between two males, and
between lovers. Morrison also expands the readers perspective on what
makes a home and what makes a family, showing that these are constructs
we create out of need and love, not only out of blood or marriage. And finally,
acts of kindness and humanitylarge and smallrun through the story,
showing that it is not so much Gods mercy that rescues us as much as it is
our mercy to one another.

Summary:
A Mercy opens with Florens, a black slave, about sixteen years old, on a
journey to visit the lover to whom she is addressing her thoughts and
feelings. Florens is a literate slave, taught by a priest in defiance of the law.
Florens recalls how she was given to her present master, Jacob Vaark, in
partial settlement of a debt her prior master, a slave owner from the brutal
Portuguese slave colony of Angola, owes to Vaark. Vaark is offered Florens
and her mother, but her mother encourages Vaark to take only Florens
because her mother is still nursing a baby boy. Florens, about eight years old
when she is taken, recounts her shock, pain, and bitterness at this
abandonment by her minha mae, my mother in Portuguese.
The second chapter, told by a third-person narrator who reveals Jacobs
thoughts and feelings, recounts Vaarks journey to meet with DOrtega and
something of his story as an orphan and beneficiary of 120 acres in the New
World. Vaark, a trader and businessman, has a soft spot for orphans and
strays. He owns Lina (a Native American slave acquired after Linas tribe is
nearly decimated by an epidemic of measles) and has taken in Sorrow (a halfdrowned foundling girl) in another business deal. The reader gets some sense
of the politics and prejudice of the period, learning of Vaarks attitude toward
the popishness of Catholic Maryland and its luxuries, built upon the free
labor of slaves, in contrast to his simple life as a northern trader. Vaark comes
away from his encounter with DOrtega feeling he has bested him by getting
even partial payment for the debt, but also envying DOrtega his grand
home, envisioning a mansion rising on a hill above the fog.
Florens continues her journey in the third chapter, telling her lover of the
events of her household and of her desire for him, recalling watching him in
his sleeplike a seventeenth-century Psyche watching her Cupid. He is
revealed to be the African blacksmith, never enslaved, who has fashioned
iron gates with kissing cobras for Vaarks new house. Vaark contracts
smallpox and dies, after which Rebekka, Vaarks wife, finds two small sores
inside her mouth. The household is quarantined, and Rebekka has sent
Florens to bring back the blacksmith, who has medical knowledge. As the
section ends, Florens settles for the night in a tree, the only place she is safe
from human and animal predators.
The fourth chapter focuses on Messalina, or "Lina," purchased by Vaark
before he brought Rebekka to the New World as his wife. Linas story, told in
the third person, recounts her beginnings in Vaarks household, her friendship
with Rebekka (based on their respective weaknesses and strengths), the
addition of Sorrow (the foundling) to the household, and the acquisition of
two indentured servants, Willard and Scully. Babies born of Rebekka and
Sorrow die early. In the present, Lina sees Vaarks new house as a vain folly
that has killed trees without asking their permission, and that has
unsurprisingly led to his death and the precarious status of the remaining
Vaark family, with orphaned females and a dying Mistress. As the section
ends, Lina wonders whether Florens, on her journey to the blacksmith, will
return at all, with or without the blacksmith.

The sixth chapter finds Florens still on her journey, talking to her blacksmith
about making choices and the looseness in her, asking, Is that how free
feels. She says that she does not like the feeling.
The seventh chapter returns to Rebekka, who has smallpox and lies in bed
with thoughts that bled into one another, confusing events and time but not
people. Hers is a fevered stream-of-consciousness narrated in the third
person. She recounts her early life in England with a strict religious
upbringing and lack of prospects until her father found Jacob Vaarks
advertisement for a wife. She mourns her lost children, the oldest of whom, a
daughter, lived until only the age of five. She remembers her voyage to the
New World and her pleasure with Vaark. Now, she awaits Florens return with
the blacksmith, who might yet save her.
Florens continues her journey in the eighth chapter. She encounters a group
of young Native Americans who offer her drink and food, a small mercy that
allows her to continue, and she ponders the advice that Lina, who had been
the victim of an abusive lover in her youth, has given her, warning Florens
that her infatuation with the blacksmith can come to no good. Seeking
shelter, Florens spends the night in the home of the Widow Ealing, whose
daughter Jane has a lazy eye (strabismus) and thus is suspected of
witchcraft. When the village cabal of witch-hunters visits Widow Ealings
house, Florens falls under suspicion as well because of her skin color, and
only the letter she carries from Rebekka saves her from further accusations.
She leaves the Widows house, making her way to the blacksmith.
The ninth section focuses on Sorrow. She is the daughter of a ships captain,
and having been carried to shore after a shipwreck, this is her first
experience living on land. When her fathers ship wrecks, Sorrow acquires an
imaginary companion, Twin, who is a great comfort to her. Sorrow is found
half-drowned by the sawyers wife, who gives Sorrow her name. Sorrow
reaches adolescence during her time at the sawyers house and is
impregnated by one of the sawyers sons. When the sawyers wife realizes
this, she quickly gets rid of Sorrow by passing her along to Jacob Vaark. When
Sorrow bears her child, Lina tells her it is too young to live and takes the
infant to set it a-sail in the widest part of the stream...." Sorrow becomes
pregnant again, having been seduced by gifts of cherries and walnuts from
the deacon and falls ill with smallpox. The blacksmith provides a kind of
osteopathic cure by slicing open a swelling and feeding the resulting
contaminated blood to Sorrow. When Rebekka falls ill with the pox too,
Rebekka sends Florens to get the blacksmith, who returns without Florens
and finds that Rebekka has recovered. The section ends with Willard and
Scully delivering Sorrows daughter, who is full-term and healthy. Sorrow
looks into her new daughters eyes and introduces herself with a new name
of her own choosing, Complete.
In the tenth chapter, Florens arrives at her journeys endthe abode of the
blacksmith. The blacksmith decides to return to Rebekka alone. He will travel
faster, and there is a young boy, Malaik, a foundling the blacksmith has taken
in, whom Florens can watch over in his absence. Florens determines that she

will stay with the blacksmith forever. But she is threatened by Malaik, still
haunted by her minha mae having chosen her younger brother over her and
sensing that Malaik is competition for the blacksmiths attention and
affection. In her resentment, she hides his cornhusk doll, and after the boy
kicks over his stool, she tries to restrain him and breaks his arm. Malaik
faints, and the blacksmith, finding the boy unconscious on the floor, strikes
Florens, assuming she is responsible. She is told to return to Rebekka. Florens
protests, telling him she adores him. He says she is a slave, with an empty
head and a wild body, a slave to lust, a wilderness. Enraged, she tries to
attack the blacksmith with his hammer.
As the eleventh chapter begins, Jacob Vaark, now deceased, appears to
Willard and Scully, the indentured servants, at the newly built, never
occupied mansion. The section focuses on the pair, who have formed a
homosexual relationship and feel that the Vaark household comprises their
family, with two parents, the Vaarks; three sisters, Lina, Florens, and Sorrow;
and themselves as helpful sons." But they see a certain deterioration in their
family since the death of Vaark and Rebekkas illness. Rebekka has retreated
to her Bible, Lina is not the same, and Florens has turned feral. Only Sorrow
seems improved, tending to her child and acting less addle-headed. Some
history is provided for Willard and Scully, allowing the reader to understand
why each needs the other and a family. But their family with the Vaarks is
now threatened, as is their ability to earn enough money to be free of
indentured servitude because Rebekka in her present state, trying to run a
farm without her husband, is quite likely to remarry.
In the twelfth chapter, told in Florens voice, she and the blacksmith have a
violent physical altercation. She returns to the Vaark household and haunts
the new house, which explains why Willard and Scully think they see Jacob
Vaarks ghost. Realizing Rebekka wants to give Sorrow away and sell Florens,
Sorrow wants to escape with Florens. But Florens has to finish something
before she can go anywhere, the story she has been telling the blacksmith.
She has written her story with a nail on the floor and walls of the room she is
in. Suddenly she realizes that the blacksmith, her audience, cannot read. She
speculates that Lina might burn the house down, so her words will rise and
fall like ashes. She says that whether slave or free, she will last. But she
keeps one sadnessthat she will never know what her mother has been
trying to tell her, and that her mother will never know what Florens wants to
say, that the soles of her feet are now hard as cypress.
Florens mother, in a first-person narrative, completes the book in the
thirteenth chapter, telling the story of how she was enslaved by other
Africans, of the infamous Middle Passage, of her time in Barbados, and of her
hope when she is purchased by DOrtega. But she and the other female
slaves are broken in by men on the plantation, and her hope diminishes.
Florens and her brother are the result of these rapes, and her hope grows
again with her children and when she arranges for them to learn to read and
write. But she sees the eyes of DOrtega upon Florens as she matures. When
Vaark comes to the plantation, Florens mother sees him as someone who
sees a child, not a piece of property, and she kneels, hoping a miracle will

save Florens. What saves Florens, though, is not God, but a mercy from
Vaark. She ends the narrative with the words she wants Florens to
understand:
To be given dominion over another is a hard thing; to wrest
dominion over another is a wrong thing; to give dominion of
yourself to another is a wicked thing.

Themes:
Slavery and Freedom
Each of the servants of the Vaark household is somewhere on the
continuum between slavery and freedom, in forms of bondage that are not
necessarily race-based. Sorrow is mongrelized, of mixed race parentage,
with curly red hair, and she does not appear to be considered black by
anyone. She is an unpaid servant, though, who is threatened with sale. Lina is
a Native American slave, and Will and Scully are white indentured servants.
Florens is the sole household slave considered black. The blacksmith,
described as African, has never been a slave. He stands as a free counterpart
to Florens, telling her she is a slave to desire for him, not to her literal
enslavement by the Vaarks. Morrison thus offers an atypical means of looking
at enslavement, which can take many forms and which is not solely a
function of race or legal status. This way of looking at slavery is rare, since its
history is usually presented as inextricably linked with that of race. Thus,
Morrison allows the reader to contemplate the myriad permutations of
slavery, contributing a new idea to the literature of slavery.
Another theme relating to slavery and freedom is the link between literacy
and freedom, or perhaps more specifically, between writing and freedom.
Much is made of Florens literacy, which she acquires with great risk, and at
the end of the book, Florens literally writes herself out of a room, telling her
story on the walls and floor of the new mansion. There is some suggestion
here that one can write oneself out of enslavement, that finding a voice is
akin to finding freedom.
Religion
Two Biblical themes are prominent in the storythe Garden of Eden and the
Promised Land. Morrisons New World is a lush Garden of Eden, with
resources for all, but there are snakes in the garden, fashioned by the
blacksmith on the gates of Jacob Vaarkss new mansion. Vaark, whose vanity
has prompted this mansion, dies before he can move in, much like Moses,
who dies with only a glimpse of the Promised Land, the mansion on the hill,
reminiscent of the city on the hill of the Puritans (and the New Testament.)
The New World is filled with more than Puritans, and religious intolerance is a
theme of the novel as well. Florens, from Catholic Maryland, notes that the

priest who delivers her to Vaark is unloved in Vaarks territory. And Vaark,
traveling to Maryland, is offended by the lax, flashy cunning of the Papists."
Lina, taken in by kindly Presbyterians, learns that it is sinful to bathe nude
in the river and is not permitted to attend church. Rebekka has been raised in
England by a mother for whom religion is a flame fueled by a wondrous
hatred," and when she reaches the New World and marries Jacob, she attends
a local Baptist church but is dissatisfied with their belief that blacks, Jews,
Catholics, and others could not enter heaven. She leaves when they refuse to
baptize her daughter. On Florens journey to the blacksmith, when she is
taken in by a woman whose daughter has a wandering eye (apparently
strabismus), she finds a household under siege from a witch hunt. The
mother lashes the daughter daily in an effort to prove she is not a demon,
since demons cannot bleed. Florens manages to escape the accusation of
being a demon only because she has a letter from Rebekka saying that she is
traveling at her mistresss behest. Thus, the New World, to which so many
have fled because of religious intolerance, is filled with the same problems as
the old.
Love
There are many exemplifications of love in A Mercy:the love of Jacob and
Rebekka, his mail-order bride, a wonderful surprise to both of them; the
maternal love of Lina for Florens; the homosexual love of Willard and Scully;
the wild love Florens has for the blacksmith; the love of Sorrow for her first
living child; and the love of Florens mother, demonstrated in a sacrifice of
which Florens is never aware. The book opens with Florens voice relating her
abandonment by her mother, and ends with the voice of Florens mother,
who explains that all she meant to do was save Florens from the life she had
lived herself. So, sadly, what is perhaps the most powerful demonstration of
love in the story is unknown to its recipient.
Home and Family
The household in A Mercy is reminiscent of that in Robert Frosts Death of
the Hired Man, in which Home is the place where, when you have to go
there, / They have to take you in. What is home for these characters? What
is family? In spite of the perception that once upon a time there were
normal family configurations in America, it is clear that this is not
necessarily the case. This home takes in wayward Native Americans, halfdrowned mongrels, and gay indentured servants. Willard and Scully
imagine themselves to be the two sons of the family, and they work hard to
maintain their status in the home of the Vaarks. Of course, when Jacob Vaark,
the patriarch, dies, there is a strong hint that this home and family will
disintegrate. But throughout the story, it is clear that a family is not
necessarily based on blood or marriage. A family is what is forged through
work, love, and mercy.
Mercy

Throughout the novel, in addition to the mercy that brings Florens to the
Vaark household, there are many mercies, large and small. Vaark shows
mercy by taking in the unwanted. The blacksmith takes in an unwanted child
as well. Lina shows mercy in her mothering of Florens. At the end of the
novel, as Florens' mother tells Florens of how she was not abandoned but
saved, Morrison makes clear that it is not heavens help she is concerned
with, not a miracle. Bestowed by God. It was a mercy. Offered by a human.
Characters:
Florens
Florens is the main character in A Mercy, and it is through her journey to and
from the home of the blacksmith that the present time of the novel's
narrative takes place. Florens is the product of the rape of her mother by a
plantation hand; she is approximately sixteen years old as the story opens
and as it ends. When Florens is very young, her mother warns Florens that
she has "prettified" ways because she cannot bear being barefoot. Florens
reports that her mother also described her as dangerous and wild. When
her mother appears to favor Florens' younger brother, Florens is emotionally
crippled and sees herself as perpetually unchosen and unprotected. Thus her
mother haunts her throughout the narrative. It is not until after her brief
relationship with the blacksmith and its aftermath, with Florens hiding in the
masters unoccupied house, writing on the walls and floor, that she achieves
any kind of closure and emotional balance.
The Blacksmith
The blacksmith, who remains unnamed throughout the story, is the object of
Florens love and lust. He has never been a slave, although it is not clear why.
His blacksmithing skills are considerable, and he is more of an artisan, which
allows him to earn what seems to be a reasonable living for a black man in
this time and place. The blacksmith and Florens meet when he is hired to
create wrought iron gates for Vaarks new mansion, and they couple shortly
thereafter. The blacksmith is Florens counterpart, black and free.
Senhor and Senhora DOrtega
Senhor and Senhora D'Ortega are Portuguese plantation owners, Catholics,
who have spent some of their lives in the Portuguese colony of Angola, which
had a reputation for exceptional cruelty to slaves. They own Florens, Florens
mother and brother, and many other slaves. Senhor has a roving eye,
particularly for attractive, young, female slaves, and this is part of the
motivation for Florens mother to let her go with Jacob Vaark. Senhor is in
debt to Jacob Vaark and seems to have no cash assets with which to pay him.
Giving Vaark a slave instead is a partial repayment of the debt.
The couple provides author Toni Morrison with an opportunity to explore
religious prejudice in the New World; readers see how Catholicism is

perceived through Vaarks eyes. The D'Ortegas also act as a foil to Vaark and
his wife because the D'Ortegas are cruel, completely profit-driven, and
represent the kind of slaveholders readers tend to picture today. But even
though the kindly Vaark and his wife are not stereotypical slaveholders, the
DOrtegas seeming affluence, as shown by their mansion, represents a
temptation to Vaark, who begins to contemplate building his own mansion.
Thus, to some degree, the D'Ortegas act as snakes in the garden for Vaark.
Although they appear and disappear early in the book, and play no part in the
storys present, their influence carries throughout the story because Vaark
does build his mansion and because Florens language carries the remnants
of their Portuguese heritage.
Jacob Vaark
Jacob Vaark is an orphaned Dutchman who has endured a
Dickensianchildhood and the humiliation of the poorhouse, only escaping
because his literacy afforded him work with a law firm. An inheritance has
provided him with a large farm in the New World, and he also makes a living
as a trader, particularly of fur and lumber. He purchases Lina and arranges for
his mail-order bride, Rebekka, from England. He is pleased with his bride, and
he and Rebekka have a hard-working and loving marriage, until his dream of
a new mansion kills him. He understands that there are orphans of all sorts,
as he was, and he has a habit of acquiring them as a form of rescue. Despite
being a slave owner, Jacob finds slavery a degraded business, and he acts
as the good slave owner in the story. He clearly has a tender heart and
cannot even bear to see an animal mistreated. Because he and Rebekka have
no living children, it would appear that much of his love and kindness is spent
on his slaves.
Rebekka Vaark
Rebekka is English and has come to the New World as Vaarks bride. She is
the daughter of a fanatically religious mother and seemed fated for a job in
domestic service. Her journey to the New World for marriage to a complete
stranger seems to her to be a better alternative. She loves the freedom and
beauty of the New World, is as pleased with Jacob as he is with her, and she
and Lina rapidly become friends. Her heartbreak is her multiple miscarriages
and one full-term daughter who dies as a child, but she and Jacob have
forged a good life for themselves. When Jacob dies, she falls ill with smallpox,
and when she emerges, weak and widowed, she is no longer happy and
whole, which seems to foreshadow the breakup of the family.
Lina
Lina is a Native American slave, one of the few surviving members of a tribe
decimated by measles. She might be the most self-actualized character in the
novel. Scully describes her loyalty to the household not as submission but as
a sense of her own self-worth. Lina maintains her own Native American
beliefs and practices, with a respect for nature that allows the reader to see
how the New World is being environmentally exploited. Lina is an

exceptionally strong character, and it is her strength that allows Rebekka to

thrive and that in many ways holds together this family of disparate
characters. Because she is a slave, at least in name if not in treatment or
behavior, she provides a glimpse into a slavery that few readers consider
the enslavement of the Native American.
Sorrow
Sorrow is a mongrelsomeone who is of mixed raceand has red hair. She
was born on a ship and lived at sea until her fathers ship capsized, tossing
her ashore. She is not even comfortable walking on land. To console herself
after the shipwreck, she creates an imaginary companion, Twin, so real to
her that if Sorrow were alive today, she would be likely be institutionalized.
She sleeps by the fireplace, a seventeenth-century New World Cinderella. She
is incredibly naive, not even capable of making the connection between the
men who take advantage of her and the pregnancies which result. When
smallpox hits the household, Sorrow nearly dies, saved only by the primitive
vaccination performed by the blacksmith. As the story ends, she is planning
to escape with her child, fearing that the household will be broken up, and
she will be sold.
Willard Bond
Willard is one of two men in indentured servitude to the Vaarks, his last name
representing both his bondage and the promise of freedom. Willard becomes
indentured at the age of fourteen to a Virginia planter, and his indenture,
which is supposed to be complete at age twenty-one, is extended for various
infractions. He finds himself leased to a northern farmer, who in turn trades
Willard to Vaark. Willard finds himself struggling with his servitude when the
blacksmith appears in the story, since he must now contemplate that a black
man might be free and paid for his work, while Willard is not, giving the
reader an understanding that freedom and slavery should not be thought of
in purely black and white terms. Willard also provides an example of another
form of love, since he and Scully are partners emotionally and sexually.
Scully
Scully, Willards partner, is the younger of the two men, only twenty-two
years old, but he has led a rougher life, and considers himself to be a better
judge of character than Willard is. His mother died at the tavern she worked
in, on the floor. A man claiming to be his father sold him to the Church,
whereupon he was seduced by a curate, who blamed Scully when they were
caught in the middle of a sexual act. The Church sends Scully north, where he
encounters Willard, and after spending a night together, they become a
couple.
Critical Reception:
Morrison has said that the novel attempts to separate race from slavery to
understand what it was like at that period of time, with the idea of slavery as

being set on an institution constructed in America at a time when the country

was just being put together. Morrison visited this subject in her essay,
Playing in the Dark, in which she explored the democratic experiment along
with the presence of the unfree.
One scene in the novel gives a fictional account of Bacons Rebellion. A group
of men who gathered black slaves and white indentured servants to
overthrow the governor of Virginia in 1676. Any white could maim or kill any
black or servants and Native Americans without any consequences by law.
This account establishes the codification of slavery as the nation was
coming together. Its violence, as Morrison explains, is at the root of most
great nationsthat and the enslavement of large portions of the population.
Like Morrisons Beloved, this novel contains an act by a mother for her
daughter that explores the personal costs of slavery. Some critics have called
A Mercy a prequel to that earlier title. Like so many of Morrison's characters,
Florens has been described as a brave soul carrying the others along with her
in the storys trajectory.
Morrisons stories continue to build one on another to fill in the details of the
story, a layered structure that signifies the meaning. The journey that Florens
travels on is told in first-person point of view for its immediacy. All other
characters are written in third person and move the story slightly forward.
The settlers of the early formation of the country start communities and
churches to build some sort of family with one another. This ensemble of
characters come randomly together as a family. They are examples of
American individuality and self-sufficiency. The novel asks how can you be an
individual in a make-shift world and also be part of a community.
Critical reviews have mostly embraced A Mercy, as it builds and continues
Morrisons familiar themes of slavery and its haunting consequences.
Reviewers praise the pre-history of America and her elegant storytelling.
Many have paired the two titles, Beloved and A Mercy, as two parts of one
story. Her rhythm and diction are compared to that of William Faulkner, as is
her ability to re-create an entire community of voices that sounds authentic,
fresh, and stirring.