The Known World | Edward P. Jones | unique and unforgettable

The Known World | Edward P. Jones | Audiobook: Confusing but Riveting Epic

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The Known World

	The Known World Edward P. Jones Amistad, 2006 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 295 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

unique and unforgettable

As we move further and further in time away from the experience of slavery all that is left are archetypal depictions. These archetypes serve as the replacement for living memory. They are also so prevalent that they become desensitized substitutes for reality. The brilliance of Jones' novel is that it reshapes the archetype and thus forces the reader to confront slavery anew.
Jones adopts the ethos and assumptions of the time as the point of view of his narration and presents it with a mournful irony. We view slavery with a 19th century journalists eyes but one with a tragic sense of resignation and despair. The reader never escapes this crushing narrative technique. The style which produces the book's haunting mood makes it a transcendental work about human cruelty and indifference in all epochs.

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Audiobook: Confusing but Riveting Epic

Even though I found the story hard to follow at times, I'm rating this book 5 stars because it is fascinating. The author tells detailed stories of multiple characters whose paths cross, moving backward and forward in time over and over. Sometimes I thought the cassette might have reversed because of the way the story jumps around - but it had not.

The characters are complex human beings who often disappointed me by becoming mean or violent. This was depressing but made the point that a system that is inherently evil (slavery) tends to enmesh people in evil as they attempt to cope with it. The book does not sugar-coat plantation life, but by making Black slaveowners a key part of the story, it does not paint slavery as a strictly racial institution. I found the book both a riveting narrative and a thought-provoking commentary on the attitudes of the slave owning gentry.

As you might expect, the book is full of injustice, and cruel acts of violence build up to a shocking incident near the end. Yet death is softened by dream-like fancies about the afterlife that are actually quite lovely. And after numerous cynical depictions of human misbehavior, the last chapter revisits some of the characters in a sweet scene showing that a trio of escaped slaves managed to succeed in Washington, DC. This scene is set on the eve of the Civil War; indeed, a letter is written on April 12, 1861, the day that Fort Sumter was bombarded, but that event is not mentioned. Most readers know, however, that 1861 was the first year of the great war that eventually ended slavery in the United States.

The narrator of the audio version does an excellent job.

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Slavery's affect on slaves

This is the Uncle Tom's Cabin of our time. The Known World shows how slavery not only changed a persons natural and physical state but also their mental state. We see how Moses breaks down over time from one who longs to keep his family together, to one pushing his family away so that he might have the chance to be free. While Stamford and Elias end up excepting their fate only later to become free men of high character. One of the main concepts introduced in this book is the ability for free black persons to own slaves. This low period in our time was not only due to racial discrimination but also class discrimination. Why is it that society plays such a huge part in our determination of right and wrong?

I found the description of the molasses ration interesting comparative to today. Did they have access to sugar during this time in history, and if not what did they use in pies and sweets? Was molasses their sweeter? I don't know, but I do want some biscuits with a little butter and a jar of molasses.

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An Unknown Truth

Edward Jones has written an intricate and well-plotted novel with "The Known World". Once again, the reader is reminded of the insidiousness of slavery, but this time from another angle. As he says in the interview following the novel's text, the number of blacks who owned slaves was probably very small, given that most people are unaware of the fact that blacks did, in fact, do so. Nevertheless, the fact that a free black would "own" another points out the depths to which slavery was accepted and condoned by Southern society, and further illustrates why ending it met with such resistance. Aside from occasionally awkward phrasing, and the method Jones uses to inform the reader about each character's fate (a method that becomes annoying by the novel's end), "The Known World" is one of the best examples of American fiction to come my way in quite a while.

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A Unique Look

This novel is an excellent work of fiction that focuses on a little known fact of slavery. Its focus is on the greed and lack of integrity that were involved with the "peculiar institution" rather than the horrible actions it facilitated. This read very mcuh like Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, an intricately-woven story that follows a family's downfall in a fictional city (in the case of World, it's Manchester County). There are elements of magical realism and a great depth of emotion in the characters, and the theme of decrepancy and rot in antebellum slavery is well explored. Delivered with masterful understatement, this book will stick for quite some time.

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