"Right" in The Known World

            It is rare, within the pages of Jones’s The Known World, for ten pages to pass without the appearance of the word “right.”  Often, it will occur in several passages clustered together, page after consecutive page in which the word “right” works just at the surface of the reader’s awareness.  Frequently, it occurs multiple times on a single page – two, three, four, even seven times when Caldonia Newman and Henry Townsend react with almost hyperbolic awareness to encountering one another for the first time (142).  The novel is perhaps best described as – and, at the risk of revealing something which occurs at the very end of the novel, is in many ways confirmed to be – a tapestry.  Though the novel flows from character to character, leaps from time and place to time and place, the word “right” is a thread that passes through all of them.

            This immense frequency allows “right” a kind of multiplicity denied other words the reader may notice cropping up several times over the course of Jones’s book, and each facet of its use would seem to warrant extensive study on its own.  “Right” is directional.  Jones crafts his characters and their placement in their world with much care.  Calvin stands “at the post on the right” or a map’s legend is “in the bottom right-hand corner” or John Skiffington watches a cardinal fly “from left to right” (189, 174, 162).  “Right” is also tied up in issues of accountability – slaves, free blacks, and lower-class whites are urged to “do right by” someone in their family or in a greater position of power.  It is used in expressions of promptness or spatial and temporal closeness.  People come “right up,” go “right in,” sit “right” by others, people wish for things to happen or witness them occurring “right” in the present moment of their thoughts.  “Right” is a synonym for “good” or “well” when William Robbins’s black mistress, Philomena, declares that he isn’t treating her “‘right’” or when the sheriff insists that his job is to make sure everyone can “‘sleep right’” at night (116, 39).  One of the aspects of “right” at the heart of the novel, however, is the moral sense of what is “right” and what is “wrong.”  The novel remains remarkably objective about what the author may believe is “right” or what modern readers know to be culturally or socially “right” with the added benefit of over a century of historical separation, and instead Jones allows moral “right” to spill from the mouths of a variety of characters, to be perverted by the likes of Harvey Travis when he eats Augustus Townsend’s free papers and sells him to an interstate slave dealer while at the same time Harvey’s right is fought with Barnum Kinsey’s protestations of “‘That ain’t right, Harvey.  That just ain’t right’” (217, 212).  In this way, Jones uses “right” not only to inform, locate, detail, or describe but also to ignite their emotions and their own beliefs surrounding “right” and “wrong.”