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in the background, with white masculine struggle in the foreground. An
even greater change is that the slaver captain (renamed Lovett) becomes
the primary character in Faulkner s adaptation, rather than the Yankee
sailor (renamed Duncan in the first two screenplays). Captain Lovett bears
more than a passing resemblance to Thomas Sutpen. He is strong, charis-
matic, and straightforward, but rough around the edges. Nevertheless, he
is represented as basically a decent man trapped in a system, with perhaps
a dose of the original Sutpen  innocence. In both versions, he explains to
Nancy, his wife, that he got into the business as a boy and found it was  too
late to get out:  I went into when I was a boy. All it meant to me then was
excitement. Boys have no sense. Then it was just my life like farming is
somebody else s life. I never thought any more of it than that and then
I was older, before I knew it, and I met you. That told me what I what I
was and what I was doing. I knew then that I was dirty . . . filthy . . . I was
ashamed. But I loved you so much that I thought I could escape from it,
so you d never know and that s what I tried to do. But it was too late. 14
In Faulkner s adaptations, Lovett tries to end his career as a slaver after
falling in love with and marrying a young Virginia woman named Nancy.
He surprises the crew with Nancy and indicates that he is going to Jamaica
to retire as a sugar planter with his wife. The crew, led by the violent first
mate, Thompson, mutinies and forces Lovett back to Africa for another
slave run. After taking on a load of slaves, Duncan steers the ship to a
safe colonial port, and the screenplay reaches its dramatic climax. Duncan
spirits Nancy away on a boat while Lovett unchains the Africans and has
 Fear of a Black Atlantic? African Passages 167
a final gunfight with Thompson. Lovett finishes as a tragic hero who has
finally done the right thing, but must die for his sins. Each version ends
with the ship exploding after a lantern fire reaches the powder magazine.
Lovett s ship and legacy, the Wanderer, meets the same spectacular end
as Sutpen s home.
This romantic handling of a slave captain may be galling to contempo-
rary readers, but nevertheless there are complexities of politics and plot
that hint at a more challenging understanding of the history of slave trade,
and a broader sense of the Black Atlantic, than in Absalom, Absalom! While
King s novel basically follows the historical routes of nineteenth-century
slave trade, Faulkner makes some key revisions. First, he eliminates the
West Indies altogether, except as a hoped-for place of retirement for Lovett.
In doing so, he sidesteps both the geography of the novel, as well as much
of the history of the trade routes themselves. Why would Faulkner make
this choice, especially given his interest in the Caribbean in portions of
Absalom, Absalom!, published that same year? Faulkner s revision of the
plot mapping within The Last Slaver shows a design to depict an enlarged
geography of the slave trade in North America, in effect expanding the
vision of a Black Atlantic that he touched on in the Haitian passages in
Absalom, Absalom! Both screenplay versions begin with a launching not in
New York City but in Salem, Massachusetts. A young girl, explicitly Nancy
in the second version, christens the yacht, but as soon as she breaks the
champagne on it and it launches into the water, it crushes a sailor. An old
sea salt watching the scene proclaims it is  launched in blood!  She s evil.
She s begun evil and she ll end evil (24 September 1936, 4 5). The ship
passes to Captain Lovett at an auction, where he is the sole bidder, as mis-
haps have given it a reputation as a cursed ship. In both screenplays, the
Wanderer will never go farther South in the U.S. than Virginia. In choos-
ing to stay so close to the North and the mid-Atlantic, Faulkner relocates
the focus of slave trade away from the Deep South and the Caribbean to-
wards the heart of the Eastern seaboard. In giving the ship a Massachusetts
origin, he also creates a symbolic connection that unites the slave trade
with a region that is the cradle of Puritanism, liberty, and witch hunts. One
might call this sectionalist evasion, but Faulkner achieves in this revision
a Hawthornian evocation of the deep, guilty dependence that all of the
United States had on slavery for its wealth and development.
Faulkner makes this confrontation even more polemical in the first
version of the screenplay. When Lovett purchases the ship, it most re-
cently was owned by someone from the  Potomac Yacht Club, the pre-
mier boating club in Washington, D.C., to which the admiral of the U.S.
Navy himself belongs. Lovett keeps the Potomac s insignia and uses its
168 j eff karem
elite provenance as a disguise: no one will pull over a ship thought to be-
long to the club, even navy cruisers, as the captains fear offending the ad-
miral and the Washington elite. As Lovett brags to his mate,  With this
yacht and that pennant up there, I ve practically got a license from the
government to import slaves (24 September 1936, 19). Although this is a
rather flimsy plot device (which may be why it was eliminated in the second
version), it evokes the sense of national complicity, even as the Webster-
Ashburton treaty of 1842 mandated that Britain and the U.S. patrol elimi-
nate slave ships. By placing a slave ship in the heart of the nation at its
very capital Faulkner suggests the inextricable connections between the
nation and the illicit trade. Faulkner s depiction of United States enforce-
ment of the treaty in the first draft is deeply cynical. When the exploits of
the slaver come to light, the British ambassador confronts the secretary of
state:  To put it bluntly, Mr. Secretary, our English government simply
cannot understand how this running of African slaves can continue in the
face of our treaty to fight it with both our navies. The American secretary
 suavely offers a lukewarm reply:  You may rest assured, sir, that the mat-
ter will not be allowed to pass without the fullest inquiry (24 September
1936, 8). This same exchange is then parroted down the bureaucratic chain
of command: to the Secretary of War, to Admiral of the Navy, to a Com-
modore, to his lieutenants. The effect of this repetition (the dialog repeats
exactly) is to suggest a rote exchange of official pronouncements, with the
promises ultimately hollow. In the first version, an idealistic young lieu- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]