Loomis
Imagery is used to enhance the character of Loomis in a way that is not made immediately available to viewers, but rather reserved for readers of the play. Those attending performances must hope the director successfully conveys this imagery through actual visual imagery:
(Herald Loomis is thirty-two years old. He is at times possessed. A man driven not by the hellhounds that seemingly bay at his heels, but by his search for a world that speaks to something about himself. He is unable to harmonize the forces that swirl around him, and seeks to recreate the world into one that contains his image. He wears a hat and a long wool coat.)
Bones on the Water
Herald Loomis has a terrifying vision made almost visceral and tangible through the hypnotic power of the imagery. It is a vision of bones rising up from the depths and “walking on top of the water.” This phrase gains agency from its intensifying repetition. The vision is one which speaks to the history of slavery as the imagery manifests the Africans who never became slaves because they never made it over the ocean.
Slave to a Dead Man
Martha explains to Herald the full history of the devastation she suffered after he disappeared when she had no idea if he was ever coming back. The consequences of that great unknown and being kicked out of her home and pressure of admitting that the overwhelming likelihood was that he was dead all worked to force her to treat him as though he were regardless. She reaches back into the history of slavery for imagery of what life would have been like had she not made that hard decision:
“I couldn’t drag you behind me like a sack of cotton.”
Roads and Bridges
Multiple references are made to bridges and roads throughout the play. The introduction to the play even adds tunnels being carved through the hills into the mix. All these avenues of transport and expansion of connectivity contribute to the historical undertones of the play to situate it at a time in America known as the Great Migration when poor blacks were engaging in mass exodus from rural southern homes to resettle in the exploding metropolises to the north.
