Augustown: A Novel

“For here is the truth: each day contains much more than its own hours, or minutes, or seconds. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that every day contains all of history.”

This philosophical line from the narrator in the prologue demonstrates the theme of The Impact of History and Memory on Contemporary Life. Every day contains all of history, meaning that every individual day is informed by the history that has come before it. This idea is important to the bridging of the events of Bedward’s flight in 1920 and the autoclaps in 1982.

“For here it is, the small panic of the heart, the widening of the eyes, the ‘O’ of the mouth. O! O! O! The past!”

The image of Ma Taffy’s “heart” connected with the past foreshadows the later “failure” of her heart during the autoclaps. This imagistic connection further establishes Ma Taffy as a bridge between the past and the present and creates tension as the narrative moves forward.

“The stone that poor people like us born with, Irene. Is a stone that sit right on top of our heads. The one that always stop we from rising.”

The “stone” is an important symbol of the oppression of the Black people of Jamaica by Babylon. Only Bedward was able to remove his stone, and eventually, Gina’s stone falls off after her death. The idea of weight keeping Black people from flying echoes throughout the novel, with allusions to images associated with slavery that kept former enslaved people rooted to the ground, like overly salty food and chains.