Sunday, February 6, 2011

Sweetsmoke

Sweetsmoke by screenwriter David Fuller is a novel set during the Civil War that follows Cassius, a favored slave on the Sweetsmoke plantation. When Cassius learns that Emoline Justice, the woman who practically raised him in the absence of his own mother, has been murdered, he investigates who killed her and uncovers a secret intelligence system against the Confederate Army in the process.

Over the course of the story, Fuller delves into slave life and the plight of freed slaves. At one point, a fellow slave tells Cassius, "Free man go wherever he want, Cassius. Free man free to go hungry with no roof over his head, free man free to get picked up by the paddyrollers without a note from the Old Master to keep him safe. Free man free to be whipped like a common slave, since he look no different to the white man." When Cassius travels to the front lines of the war to find the son of his master, the conditions of the Confederate soldiers aren't much different--they are underfed, lack supplies and sufficient uniforms, and one is seen walking around barefoot.

While the story is okay, what I found really interesting about this book was Fuller's use of punctuation. The dialogue of free men and women is shown between quotation marks, but the words of slaves appear without quotation marks. Which means you have to pay attention, but as a copyediting student, I thought such a symbolic use of punctuation was unique and extremely effective at showing how these people were treated as lesser beings.