The Passing of Grandison

One of the most important motifs in the story is that of the happy slave. This was a pervasive myth among white Americans both before and after the Civil War, in the North and South. And Grandison repeatedly reflects the myth back to the Owens family in his professions of contentment and loyalty. In his Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, formerly enslaved person Frederick Douglass recounts his shock upon hearing such myths: “I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake” (Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas, an American Slave, Barnes and Nobles Classic, 2003, pp. 26). The motif illustrates the story’s theme of The Relationship Between Freedom and Autonomy. While the happy slave might not have existed as a historical fact, it did exist as an element of the ideology that supported slavery. Grandison’s motivic performance of what the Owens family expected to see allows him to control and outsmart them.