Copper Sun

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2006

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Chapters 4-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part One: Amari

Chapter 4 Summary: Death March to Cape Coast

This chapter begins with a run-down of the deaths of the people Amari knows who were “left on the side of the road for the hyenas” (21). Other coffles of slaves join them, and they eventually make it to a city where “white men [were] walking arm in arm with black men, with no chains on either of them” (22). Amari catches a few words that their captors repeat: slave, price, and Cape Coast. The crowd is eventually separated, the men from the women, and shoved into a large, dark building where Amari can smell “sweat and fear…body wastes and hopelessness” (24). Bread is thrown in, but the women fight for every scrap. A larger woman comes over to Amari and offers her a piece. Amari tells her that she feels “like a broken drum—hollow, crushed unable to make a sound” (25). The woman tells her she “must learn to make music once more” (25). This woman, Afi, has been sold once before, and her white man grew tired of her and sold her back. She gives Amari the details of how they will all be sold and sent into the sea.

Chapter 5 Summary: The Door of No Return

Afi makes “sure Amari had food each day and protected her from the other women who had grown fierce and violent from their captivity” (28). A group of white men come in to inspect a group of the women, and Amari is selected and sold. After being taken outside, she marvels at the sight of the ocean and the ship, “the death house that tossed on the waves” (32). She is then branded along with all of the others. She sees that Besa eventually joins the circle. “The spirit of the copper sun seemed to bleed for them as it glowed bright red against the deepening blue of the great water” (34).

Chapter 6 Summary: From Sand to Ship

While grouped together and waiting on the beach, Afi tells Amari the harsh truth about their situation, and Amari doesn’t want to go on. However, Afi says, “I see a power in you” (37), and that is why she must stay alive. They are then hauled away onto lifeboats to sail out to the large ship. All of them shriek and cry in fright at the water. They are whipped and laughed at by their captors. “Why do they beat us? Amari thought willy. To silence us? To stop our fear? Nothing made sense” (39).

Chapters 4-6 Analysis

The horror for Amari and the other Ewe people continues as they are treated with inhumane carelessness. The neck irons they wear “would not have used even on animals” (17). Later, they are again shown to be less than animals: “they just marched, prisoners in a land so full of beauty and harmony that Amari could not bear to watch the golden sun rising in the east or the freely running giraffes and elephants in the distance” (22). In fact, the animals with their freedom have better circumstances than the slaves. To solidify this treatment like animals, the slaves are branded like cattle and corralled together in a building like a barn.

Ironically, “lifeboats” bring the slaves to the “ship of death.” In an attempt to understand her circumstances, Amari attempts to understand the motivation behind the white men and their treatment of her people. This is in vain, however, because this reality is so foreign to her. Clearly, her white captors don’t see things from the slaves’ perspectives. One of Draper’s major points is that hatred is bred when there is no understanding.