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Jacob Vaark
D’Ortega is a Portuguese Catholic slave trader living in Maryland. Jacob goes to see him at the beginning of the book to discuss business. D’Ortega is indulgent and ostentatious—he owns an enormous plantation called “Jublio,” many slaves, and a beautiful but gaudy house. D’Ortega rapes Florens’s mother and generally mistreats his slaves, including the ones he ships in from Africa to trade. D’Ortega has gotten himself into debt through a series of bad business decisions, prompting him to give Florens to Jacob to settle his debt.
D’Ortega Quotes in A Mercy
The A Mercy quotes below are all either spoken by D’Ortega or refer to D’Ortega. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
Disaster had struck…D’Ortega’s ship had been anchored a nautical mile from shore for a month waiting for a vessel, due any day, to replenish what he had lost. A third of his cargo had died of ship fever. Fined five thousand pounds of tobacco…for throwing their bodies too close to the bay; forced to scoop up the corpses…they used pikes and nets…a purchase which itself cost two pounds, six. He’d had to pile them in two drays (six shillings), cart them out to low land where saltweed and alligators would finish the work.
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They both spoke of the gravity, the unique responsibility, this untamed world offered them; its unbreakable connection to God’s work and the difficulties they endured on His behalf. Caring for ill or recalcitrant labor was enough, they said, for canonization.
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Chapter 12
Quotes
To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.
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D’Ortega Quotes in A Mercy
The A Mercy quotes below are all either spoken by D’Ortega or refer to D’Ortega. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
Disaster had struck…D’Ortega’s ship had been anchored a nautical mile from shore for a month waiting for a vessel, due any day, to replenish what he had lost. A third of his cargo had died of ship fever. Fined five thousand pounds of tobacco…for throwing their bodies too close to the bay; forced to scoop up the corpses…they used pikes and nets…a purchase which itself cost two pounds, six. He’d had to pile them in two drays (six shillings), cart them out to low land where saltweed and alligators would finish the work.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
They both spoke of the gravity, the unique responsibility, this untamed world offered them; its unbreakable connection to God’s work and the difficulties they endured on His behalf. Caring for ill or recalcitrant labor was enough, they said, for canonization.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12
Quotes
To be female in this place is to be an open wound that cannot heal. Even if scars form, the festering is ever below.
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Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
