Names
There are whole paragraphs in the novel filled with names of people who were ripped from their home Africa. Each name has a meaning, the meaning that guides its owner. Ashanti, Wolof, Akan, Fulan, Mbundu are only a few of those names. Their names are something taken very seriously, they are to be honored and cherished.
Butterflies
The group of African people captured, brought and chained in a small shed on American soil observes a dance of colorful butterflies and how magnificent they are in their freedom. They wonder how a worm can transform into something beautiful. They wonder if the future generations will be asking the same question, how they survived this incomprehensible suffering.
Death
Death is a constant personified presence in the novel. It is present with them on the ship and it follows them all the way to the shed where there is only a small part of them left. Some are violently forced to meet death, but some embrace it as a relief from pain. It is not death itself that is the antagonist of the story.
