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Literary Devices
Definition of Allegory
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The Tortoise and The Hare" is... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and events. The story of "The... read full definition
An allegory is a work that conveys a hidden meaning—usually moral, spiritual, or political—through the use of symbolic characters and... read full definition
Chapter 9: Richie
Explanation and Analysis—Trapped:
In one of the first frightening and dreamlike passages in which he talks about Parchman, Richie discusses how he never truly escaped the prison that killed him. Ward uses allegory and foreshadowing to show how Parchman continues to control Richie long after death:
I didn’t understand time, either, when I was young. How could I know that after I died, Parchman would pull me from the sky? How could I imagine Parchman would pull me to it and refuse to let go? [...] I was trapped, as trapped as I’d been in the room of pines where I woke up. Trapped as I was before the white snake, the black vulture, came for me. Parchman had imprisoned me again. I wandered the new prison, night after night. It was a place bound by cinder blocks and cement.
This passage is part of the novel’s overarching allegory of the prison system and other racist institutions haunting Black American lives. To Richie and people like him, Parchman is more than a prison. Richie describes Parchman as a force that pulls, holds, and re-imprisons its victims even after death. It refuses to release him no matter what he does, binding him to Earth with “cinder blocks and cement.” Richie’s vision of Parchman stands in for the larger structure of racial violence that Sing, Unburied, Sing explores. For Richie and others, the prison system does not simply punish them for crimes they have allegedly committed. Its power is everlasting because its influence is so strong that can even rewrite what happens after life ends. Richie cannot move on—not because of who he was, or what he did—but because of what Parchman represents. Institutionalized racism restricts the freedoms and the future of Black people across generations. In the novel as a whole, Parchman is a sinkhole full of this ongoing legacy of trauma and control.
The passage also foreshadows the emotional captivity that other Parchman-imprisoned Black characters will later describe. Richie’s descriptions of the hold Parchman has over him also apply to people like Pop, who isn’t dead yet but seems doomed to the same fate. Though they are not inside a literal prison, Ward’s other characters must still live in a society that restricts and damages them simply for being Black.
Related Themes:
