Justifications Through the Word "Right"

One of the major themes in The Known World is that slavery warps peoples’ ideas of good and evil and makes it hard to distinguish between good and bad people. This theme is seen through use of the word “right.” In this sense, the word “right” can be seen as a way to show how characters in the novel create twisted definitions of the word “right” so that they can justify their mistreatment of their slaves.

Robbins uses his definition of the world “right” to justify his owning and abusing slaves. When he is leaving, he says to Rita, “You see things go right,” and the narrator describes, “He meant for her not to let the boy go too many steps beyond his property” (16). To Robbins, “right” means that a slave stays on the property and does what he is told. Later, when a slave does not do what she is told, “[Robbins’] overseer flay[s] the skin on her back with whippings meant to make her do what was right and proper” (27). Robbins taught the overseer that to do right, slaves must do what they are told, and the overseer uses this definition of “right” to justify whipping the slave.

Other masters use their definitions of the word “right” to control the behavior of their slaves. In the passage in which Henry’s coffin is being built, the narrator describes how most free people in Manchester County were buried in coffins made of pine, and sometimes “The slaves sometimes got pine, if they had always done the right thing and their masters thought they deserved it” (72). Masters decide how to treat their slaves based on how well they follow their decisions about what is right.

After her husband’s death, Caldonia reflects on her husband’s treatment of his slaves, and decides that “Henry had been a good master, as good as they come…Yes, he had some slaves beaten, but those were the ones who would not do what was right and proper” (181). To Caldonia, “right” means that a slave does exactly what their master tells them to do, and she uses this definition to justify her deceased husband’s treatment of his slaves.

The characters in the novel have no solid distinction between what is right and what is wrong; those distinctions are left to each character to decide. Masters justify their mistreatment of other human beings by creating their own definitions of the word “right,” twisting the ideas of good and evil to make themselves look like the good people and force the slaves to do what they want.