The Last Runaway

Content Warning: This section references slavery, racism, deaths of family members, and violence (including gun violence).

“Honor had not thought that something as fundamental as a bridge would be so different in America.”

Before she becomes embroiled in the political realities of a pre-abolition America, Honor notices The Differences Between America and England most sharply via observations of minor details. These changes prove even more destabilizing in that they are minor; it is the changes in small things that persistently remind Honor that even seemingly universal ways of doing things are altered in her new country, leaving her uncertain about how to interact with this novel landscape.

“It took discipline to quieten the mind. Honor often found a kind of peace, but the truth depth of the Inner Light, that feeling that God accompanied her, was harder to reach. She would not expect to find it in the middle of Ohio woods with an old man humming hymns beside her.”

Honor’s surprise at finding “Inner Light” in the Ohio woods indicates how deeply she has come to assume that everything will be different in America, caused by the many changes she encounters between the United States and Britain. That she can access this peace, however, suggests that, to Honor, God’s presence is universal, no matter her location.

“That was all she could take in, or knew how to take in, for she was not familiar enough with Negro features to be able to gauge and compare and describe them. She did not know if he was frightened or angry or resigned. To her he simply looked black.”

Though Honor has been raised to believe that slavery is morally wrong, her first interaction with a Black person reveals that she still holds significant racial prejudice. Though this racism is born of ignorance rather than malice and is far less violent than that of others she encounters in America (such as Donovan), she still views Black people as “other,” a framing that she does not ever fully come to understand as racist.