Barry Unsworth's Sacred Hunger

The Oxford Dictionary defines power as “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” When a group of people collectively holds power over the other, the power gains legitimacy and gets reified into legitimate practices and traditions that could be replicated by other members of the group. During the eighteenth century in Europe and Africa, the race of a person often dictated fate of the person. In Sacred Hunger, Barry Unsworth illustrates the power disparity between the white slave traders and the African slaves by depicting the reality of slave trade in the 18th century slave trade. The power disparity at that time was so immense and absolute that even extreme measures of violence by the white slave traders were considered as part of tradition. In Chapter 29, Captain Thurso treated the slaves as if they were animals. The cells that were provided to the slaves in the ship were barely big enough to house a single person. Living conditions were so poor for the slaves that they would rather have died than have survived the journey. Also, Thurso forced the slaves to perform an old tradition known as “dancing the slaves”. The chained slaves had to dance until the ship crew were satisfied. By the time the crew was satisfied, the slaves’ ankles were bleeding and

Thurso described his experience when the slaves started to kill themselves because they thought that was the only way to go back home. He said he cleaved the heads of those who killed themselves in front of all the slaves. This instilled fear in those who were contemplating if they should jump off the ship and ultimately stopped the slaves killing themselves. Thurso wanted them to know that they would be “going home” without their heads. This illustrate again shows the power disparity between the two races and how deeply it was ingrained in the minds of the people at that