The New Press Reading Group Guide
Slave Old Man A Novel
by Patrick Chamoiseau translated from the French and Creole by Linda Coverdale
Q UES T I ON S The runaway slave narrative has a long tradition in the United States, stretching back to the antebellum South. How is Slave Old Man, written by a Caribbean author and set on the island of Martinique, similar to these narratives, and how is it different? Why do you think Patrick Chamoiseau chose to infuse this story with so many “magical” elements rather than write it as a straightforward historical narrative of a slave’s escape to freedom? The narrator writes, “Stories of slavery do not interest us much. Literature rarely holds forth on this subject.” Is this really true? Why does the narrator make such a debatable claim? (p. 3) The novel begins, “In slavery times in the sugar isles, once there was an old black man, a vieuxnègre, without misbehaves or gros-saut orneriness or showy ways. He was a lover of silence, taster of solitude.” Does this characterization of the man shed light on why he would suddenly risk his life and run away? (p. 3) Who is the “Storyteller”? Is he/she the teller of this story or someone or something else? One of the key characters in the book is a fierce dog, the mastiff, who chases the old man through the jungle. Do you think the mastiff represents something more than a mere dog? One passage says, “The mastiff is like that, but it commands a mass of instincts that delude the dog into seeing sense there, a meaning now tied to the taste of the bloody flesh the Master feeds the beast as the meaning of existence. The dog is the Master’s rudderless soul. It is the slave’s suffering double.” How are the old man, the Master, and the dog bound together? Do they form a kind of unholy trinity, and why would Chamoiseau link them in this way? (p. 32)
READING GROUP GUIDE FOR SLAVE OLD MAN BY PATRICK CHAMOISEAU © THE NEW PRESS
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