53 pages 1 hour read

Amos Fortune, Free Man

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1950

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Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Hard Work Fills the Iron Kettle 1781-1789”

Fortune and Violet spend their first summer in Jaffrey building their new house. Celyndia helps with small, manageable tasks. While they are so busy building, Violet longs to have time to use the loom that Fortune made for her. When Celyndia isn’t helping, she explores the outdoors and plays with the children in town. The children gather berries, which Celyndia brings home sometimes for the family to eat. Celyndia is still hesitant about exploring freely, but Fortune reminds that she is also free to go wherever the other kids go. Fortune continues with his tanning work, and Violet helps him with this work, too. While Fortune is proud to have his own place for his family, he misses the advanced equipment he had back in Woburn. To complete his tannery, he constructs a yard to dry his pelts. By the time his tannery is ready, he already has customers coming for his services. The customers, who sometimes hang around the cabin, affectionately call Fortune “Old Amos.” When his white customers see his joy, they feel envious of how happy Black people are.   

Fortune’s business thrives during the first year, and the tanning equipment starts to take up most of the room in their cabin. Eventually, he adds an additional room so that the family has more living space. His business is so successful that his savings increase rapidly; Fortune secretly dreams of buying his own plot of land with more space and a stall for Cyclops, and his savings help him near that goal. Violet can sense that Fortune has a dream, and she imagines him climbing a mountain in his mind. Fortune regularly uses how clearly he can or cannot see Mount Monadnock in the distance to determine whether the skies are clear or not. He speaks of the mountain like a friend who tells him the weather. One day, Celyndia asks what “Monadnock” means; Fortune explains that it means “the Mountain that stands alone” (116) in an American Indigenous language. Violet identifies with this feeling of standing alone. 

A young man comes to the cabin one day insistent that Fortune tan his hide in time for his wedding in the new year. The man tries to hurry Fortune and threatens to bring it to another tanner, but Fortune remains confident that the hide needs time. The man consents to leave his hide, and Fortune gets to work. As always, Violet helps him as well. Fortune works every day from sunrise until sunset except Sundays. On Sundays, he wears his fur hat on his head, which is now covered in white hair. They go to church in the Meeting House, where Black people must sit in a separate pew in the gallery. The Fortunes befriend several other Black people there, including Pompey Blackman, Caesar Freeman, Fortune Little, and the Burdoo family. The Burdoo children love Fortune. The preacher is a spirited young man named Laban Ainsworth, whose right arm is injured and cannot move.

Fortune is pleased with his life that has a balance of joy and hard work. After eight years, Fortune finally becomes an official member of the Meeting House church. When the members vote to accept him, they regret that he isn’t white, but Fortune is still happy about the news. The Fortunes go to the Burdoos to share the good news; Moses Burdoo died five years earlier and his wife, Lois, struggles with their many children. Fortune visits Lois often, but Violet does not like her very much because she feels that Lois falls short in caring for her family and improving their situation. When the Fortunes arrive, the Burdoos are sorrowfully singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” When the Burdoos see the Fortunes, the children ask Fortune to tell them a story about Africa. He instructs the children to hum as he tells the story in a song-like voice about how a chief laid in a canoe when he dies. Then, he joins hands with the children and sings. When it’s over, Fortune sees Lois crying. Lois explains that they are struggling, so Fortune invites her sons to work with him at the tannery for some money. That night, Violet hears Fortune counting the coins in their kettle. Though she usually trusts him, Violet decides to secretly bury the kettle the following day while Fortune is working.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Amos on the Mountain”

Fortune still longs to buy land of his own and looks at a plot owned by William Turner, who is willing to sell 25 acres. When Fortune goes to survey the land, he is very pleased but changes his mind: He was ready to purchase the land, but after speaking with Lois Burdoo about her troubles, he feels inspired to buy a house in the village for them with the money instead. When he expresses his sympathy for Lois to Violet, she is displeased. Violet is upset that he wants to spend the money helping them instead of buying the plot of land for his family that he had been saving. She feels conflicted about hiding the kettle since Fortune has always been trustworthy and he was once charitable enough to purchase her freedom. When Fortune cannot find the kettle, he asks Celyndia if she moved it. Finally, Violet admits what she did. When Fortune learns this, he sends Celyndia on an errand so that he and Violet can talk. Violet refuses to tell Fortune where she hid the kettle. She feels that Fortune always throws his money away on charity right when he has saved enough to help improve his own life. She feels that he deserves the dignity of using his hard-earned money and that giving Lois money will only enable her laziness. Violet refuses to tell him where the kettle is hidden, agreeing to only return it when he is ready to buy the land from Turner. Fortune spends the next day thinking about the Burdoos and their struggle. At lunch together, Fortune is tense, and Violet is anguished at his displeasure. Violet prays for patience and decides that if he feels the same tomorrow, she will relent. Fortune goes to the mountain that night to pray about what he should do. 

Atop the mountain, Fortune thinks about how far he has come in life. He is torn between securing land so that his family will be cared for if he dies and helping the suffering Burdoo family. Likewise, while he is unhappy that Violet is opposing him, he recognizes that she is exercising the free will he bought for her to do what she feels is right. Fortune asks God for an answer. Falling asleep on the mountain, he awakes in the middle of the night to a great wind and roaring sound. Fortune feels that it is the voice of God, and he prays for understanding. In the morning, he eats there and watches the people below begin their days on the land they have the pleasure of owning. A feeling comes over Fortune that having land is a long-lasting way to maintain wealth in this country. To Violet’s relief, Fortune returns home having decided to buy the land. When he returns, Violet has already returned the kettle to its spot in the house. That afternoon they purchase the land.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

The novel heavily emphasizes the theme of Earning Freedom Through Hard Work and Self-Reliance. While evident throughout the entire book, this theme is most prominent in Chapters 7 and 8. For example, Chapter 7 offers tedious descriptions of the details of Fortune’s labor: “With the hide in position, Amos worked over it with his two-handed scraper. The concave curve of the knife’s edge fitted the convex surface of the beam and with slow pushing strokes he half shaved away, half scraped off the hair and epidermis” (117). The descriptive passage continues over the next few pages detailing his process and his working habits. Throughout the novel, Fortune is characterized as a good man—honest, patient, and generous. The text generally lauds Fortune’s character as unquestionably good, meaning that any quality or opinion associated with him has the narrative’s endorsement. The reader can therefore deduce that the novel endorses the value of hard work—one of Fortune’s defining characteristics as a formerly dedicated prince, a diligent enslaved laborer, and a respected tradesman in his years after his manumission.

In valuing hard work, the narrative alternatively criticizes idleness. We see this in the character of Lois Burdoo, a widow and mother of several children. The Burdoos are another Black family who live in Jaffrey and are friendly with the Fortunes, but they struggle in poverty following the death of Lois’s husband. Violet represents the narrative’s disapproval of Lois, who is an example of Black poverty: “She scorned Lois’ inability to care for her family and to rise above the conditions of her life” (123). To Violet, there is no excuse for the Burdoos’ continued struggling; she blames Lois for their situation. In Chapter 8, this blame is abundantly clear when Violet makes her feelings known to Fortune when he expresses his desire to donate money to the Burdoos: “‘There’s a fire that burns fast the more fuel goes on it and that’s shiftlessness,’ Violet said stoutly. ‘Lois is a shiftless woman and money is just so much fuel to her fire’” (136). Juxtaposing the impoverished Burdoos with the prosperous Fortunes makes a narrative point about gender; without the man of the house, Lois struggles to provide for her family. Fortune feels compelled to step in and be the surrogate patriarch, which is shown by his desire to buy the Burdoos a house. He has been financially responsible for every woman in his life, and even though he does not have a romantic attachment to Lois, he sees her as another woman in need of his help.

Violet is the narrative bridge upon which Fortune is able to arrive at his decision to buy the land. While it is Violet that forces Fortune to consider using the money for his own family, Fortune credits God—the ultimate patriarch—with guiding him toward the right course of action. In short, as Violet absorbs all the negative implications of being the character that voices doubt, Fortune is absolved of those implications and can be characterized as a good Christian.

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