Right in The Known World

Right and wrong are often subjective, circumstantial terms. As much as some would like to paint what is right and wrong in black and white, reality often complicates the issue. This remains true in The Known World, a novel revolved around slavery. Right is a dynamic term. While society today would look back on the antebellum South and say there was no room for any right in the institution of slavery, it being pure evil, the people of the day would disagree. Robbins feels his slave ownership is contributing positively to the world and that he has a stake in "keeping this world going right" (38). A merciless owner and unscrupulous businessman, Robbins honestly believes that his actions are the right way to go about things. Right is a justification of evil in the novel; it is an ever changing word that is used by people who want to write off their lack of morals as the ends justifying the means.

A popular term in The Known World is to "do right" by someone or something, meaning that the person in question acted in a way that is viewed as the best course of action. Fern Elston, for example, tells Caldonia she always thought Caldonia "did right in marrying him [Henry]" (7). Despite a desire to do right from just about everyone in the novel, an agreed upon definition of what right is is never established. Slaves were sometimes buried in pine coffins, but only if “they had always done the right thing and their masters thought they deserved it” (72). What is the right thing? It is whatever the master decides it is. But the right thing could vary from master to master; it could mean something different to a free black man, or a slave, or an abolitionist. It meant something different from patroller to patroller, as Harvey did not find it wrong to sell Augustus Townsend back into slavery, yet Barnum protested vocally, proclaiming, “That ain’t right, Harvey. This just ain’t right” (212). Right can take on whatever meaning or role it has to when it is convenient for the person using it.