Middle Passage

Ebenezer Falcon is a classic Napoleonic figure whose short stature contrasts with his grandiose plans for himself and others. Johnson portrays Falcon as the evil genius of the ship, a person whose hubris—the belief he can enslave and sell a god—proves to be his own undoing and that of the people for whom he is responsible.

Falcon’s insane, imperialistic plans are driven by his sense that one defines oneself through violence against and dominance over others, even to the extent of murder. This type—the ruthless pirate captain—is common in sea narratives and would ordinarily be a heroic character. Johnson uses Falcon’s journals, filtered through Rutherford’s (then) immoral and skeptical eyes—to characterize the man as anything but heroic, however.

Falcon’s presiding over the mistreatment of the Allmuseri and capture of the Allmuseri god are sickening evidence that he is truly insane, and these actions are the last straw for Rutherford, who decides in the end to subvert the captain. Falcon is unable to adjust to being a person who is on the receiving end of domination and violence, however, so he kills himself. His last gesture in the novel is to task Rutherford with telling his story. Rutherford, of course, gets the last word, ensuring that Falcon is portrayed in as negative a light as possible.

Ngonyama, like Rutherford, serves as an intermediary between the Allmuseri and the crew. To some extent, his arc in the novel shows a man’s evolution from an African to an African American/Western identity under pressure from the extreme conditions of the middle passage.

Prior to the voyage, Ngonyama was a member of the ruling family in his tribe. Like most members of his tribe, he possesses mystical powers and likely understands himself as an inheritor of an ancient culture that gave birth to all others in the world. His experiences in the middle passage change all of that.

As a result of his contact with the crew and the trauma he experiences and witnesses, Ngonyama changes. Learning English forces him to shift his perception of the world to one that is more fragmented and linear. Even more consequential is his use of violence to free himself and his tribes people, which Ngonyama and the Allmuseri see as a fall from grace and unity from which they can never recover. Ngonyama presumably goes down with the ship, confirming his sense that there is no recovering from the violence of his encounter with Western and American culture.

Peter Cringle is the first mate of the Republic. His characterization occurs mostly through the perspective of Rutherford, who sees him as a moral authority and one of the few competent people aboard the ship. By contrast, the common sailors of the ship despise Cringle because they find his speech and dress too elitist. The men nevertheless turn to Cringle to lead the mutiny.

As it turns out, Cringle is ineffectual. (The mutiny fails.) His inability to preserve himself and much of the crew is the last failure in a series of failures: Cringle is the failed son of a self-made man who dislikes the weakness of his son. Cringle’s last act is to offer himself up as meat for his mates. This self-sacrificing gesture shows the cost of trying to live out the enlightened values to which his culture gives lip service.

A fair-skinned African-American schoolteacher who originally hails from New England, Isadora is one of three directly represented female characters in the novel. Isadora embodies the repressive forces of black respectability and drives Rutherford Calhoun out of New Orleans when she attempts to trap him into marriage. From Rutherford’s perspective, Isadora is asexual, prim, and repressive.

Isadora is left behind, along with the civilized world, for much of the novel, appearing again only at the end. Her grief over Rutherford’s disappearance and the pressure to marry Papa have transformed her into a fantasy black female figure—nubile, sexually compliant, thin. By the novel’s end, she agrees to become a chaste mother in Rutherford’s nuclear family made up of Santos, a bouncer for crime boss Papa Zeringue; the Allmuseri orphans; and Isadora’s stray animals. 

Papa Zeringue is the black Creole crime boss whose threats serve as the stick in Isadora’s plot to force Rutherford into marriage back in New Orleans. To all appearances, Papa launders his money into respectability by supporting civic projects that improve the lives of the black inhabitants of New Orleans. Papa sees himself as a shrewd businessman above all else.

The turn in his character occurs at the very end of the novel when he is revealed as a silent partner in the slave trade through his investment in the Republic. His corruption leads his muscle—Santos—to turn on him, revealing that only money and violence make him powerful enough to overcome the force of prejudice in 19th-century America.

The ship’s cook, Josiah Squibb, is the person whose drunkenness gives Rutherford the idea of stowing away on the ship. Squibb goes from being an alcoholic sailor with a broken body to being a survivor who is forced to change—becoming ship’s doctor, doing the hard work of killing Cringle for meat, and caring for Rutherford when he is ill—in order to survive.

Santos is a hulking African-American man whose threats of physical violence allow Papa Zeringue to maintain control over his business concerns. The most significant shift in Santos’s character occurs at the end of the novel when Santos turns on Papa Zeringue after Rutherford exposes Papa’s involvement in the slave trade. Santos is a direct descendent of the Allmuseri, a fact that leads him to side with Rutherford.

Formerly a drunkard and menial laborer among the Allmuseri back in Africa, Diamelo positions himself as a protector of Allmuseri culture aboard the ship by making ridiculous demands that make no sense for the context. Diamelo is a black archetype—the Afrocentrist or “race man” who uses black culture to gain political power. His primary purposes in the novel are to allow Johnson to poke fun at black racial politics and to serve to heighten the tension once the Allmuseri assume control of the ship. 

Rutherford Calhoun’s much older brother, Jackson, is a model of black masculine respectability. Jacksons has so fully accepted the values of his owner, Peleg Chandler, that he advises Chandler to divide his estate among the slaves and give the rest to Oberlin College. Jackson serves as a foil to Rutherford and appears indirectly through Rutherford’s perspective.