Summary
The speaker states his intent to unflinchingly record the details of his present and past. He is a former slave who has recently joined the Union Army. He does hard labor as part of a supply unit, carrying heavy objects and digging trenches. He and the other soldiers take objects from abandoned Southern homes; this includes the journal in which he has been writing this account. He comes to Fort Massachusetts on a ship, and shares a moment of connection with another former slave, whose back bears many scars from the lash of a whip. Finally, he learns what he has been brought to the island to do: guard Confederate soldiers who are taken prisoner.
Analysis
"Native Guard" is a sequence of sonnets, written as journal entries. They are written from the perspective of a soldier who is a member of a regiment guarding Confederate prisoners. He and the other members of this regiment are recently freed slaves. In each section, he tries to render the scene with unwavering clarity, regardless of its harshness. The sequence represents his attempt to understand the difference between his old life as a slave and his new life as a member of this guard, as he asks himself how much freedom the Union Army has really given him.
In the first entry, "November 1862," the speaker describes his mission in writing these poems: "Truth be told, I do not want to forget / anything of my former life." He then offers a series of natural images from the Gulf coast ("the landscape's / song of bondage—dirge in the river's throat / where it churns into the Gulf, wind in trees / choked with vines") which he believes are representative of his experience as a slave. The use of the words "throat" and "choke" subtly cues the reader to envision these landscape scenes as extensions of the speaker's "bondage." He hopes to engage in "remembrance not constant recollection," meaning he wants to purposefully remember these in order not to have to carry them around. He then provides some backstory about himself, saying "Yes: I was born a slave, at harvest time, / in the Parish of Ascension; I've reached / thirty-three with history of one younger / inscribed upon my back." He mentions his former life as a slave, before going on to depict his new life, and his new relationship with his memories: "I now use ink / to keep record, a closed book, not the lure / of memory—flawed, changeful—that dulls the lash / for the master, sharpens it for the slave." In place of the lashes which once "inscribed" the speaker, he now uses "ink" to recapture the events of the past and present. He contrasts this with the unreliable "lure of memory," which, in his old life, was misshapen by a desire to forget, as that made it easier to endure the everyday pains. He is also making a statement about the importance of writing, as it allows him to tell his story and capture every detail.
In the second entry, "December 1862," the speaker describes his basic training: "For the slave, having a master sharpens / the bend into work, the way the sergeant / moves us now to perfect battalion drill, / dress parade." His phrase "sharpens the bend into work" refers to the fact that having previously been enslaved makes receiving orders a harsher ordeal, as it recalls the brutality they experienced in their former lives. He then elaborates on the fact that a number of things are not so different from how they were before: "Still, we're called supply units / not infantry—and so we dig trenches, / haul burdens for the army no less heavy / than before. I heard the colonel call it / nigger work. Half rations make our work / familiar still." The speaker and his other fellow soldiers do not fight in the infantry; they carry heavy objects and dig trenches, essentially doing work that no one else wants to do. He notes that these loads are "no less heavy than before" meaning that this work is no less daunting than what they used to do as slaves. The colonel's use of a racial slur, as well as their lesser allotment of food, makes their markedly low status in the camp painfully apparent. He comments that they take various things from abandoned Southern homes including, importantly, the journal he is writing this account in. He specifically mentions that his own writing intersects with that of the previous owner's: "even this journal, near full / with someone else's words, overlapped now, / crosshatched beneath mine. On every page, / his story intersecting with my own." This intersection becomes a recurring note in the sequence, as he finds other moments of unexpected connection. It also hints at a universal desire to record the events of a life, regardless of how different the circumstances are.
In the next entry, "January 1863," the speaker writes about his arrival at Fort Massachusetts from his "berth upon a ship called the Northern Star." He states: "Fort Massachusetts: a great irony— / both path and destination of freedom / I'd not dared to travel," noting the irony that despite the name of the fort itself, he had not "dared" to try and escape north, to the free state Massachusetts. He has ended up a free man in a place of the same name. As he finds himself "fly-bitten" and "smothered by heat," he reflects on the common struggle of all people: "I can look out / upon the Gulf and see the surf breaking, / tossing the ships, the great gunboats bobbing / on the water. And are we not the same, / slaves in the hands of the master, destiny?" In seeing the large gunboats being thrown about in the water, he wonders if everyone is enslaved by the fickleness of destiny. This is linked to his previous comments about the similarities between his life as a slave and his life as a free man, suggesting that true freedom is hard to come by. He closes the section with a powerful image of the sky, symbolizing the promise of his future: "—night sky red with the promise of fortune, / dawn pink as new flesh: healing, unfettered." The tone here is a hopeful one, optimistic about what might lie ahead, as both the night and day promise something new. The inclusion of the words "healing" and "unfettered" show that he is envisioning how changed his life after slavery could be.
In the entry "January 1863," the speaker writes of their supplies being "washed away in the storm that rose too fast," catching them unaware. He then experiences a moment of surprising kinship with another soldier: "I joined in the low singing someone raised / to pace us, and felt a bond in labor / I had not known." He subsequently discovers that this man was also a slave, whose back bears the scars of a whip: "It was then a dark man / removed his shirt, revealed the scars, crosshatched / like the lines in this journal, on his back." Their bond is highlighted in an unspoken manner, as they fall easily into singing a work song and unearth some commonalities. He adds that this man imparted an important detail to them ("It was he who remarked at how the ropes / cracked like whips on the sand, made us take note / of the wild dance of a tent loosed by wind,") which then reveals the lesson that they all learned that day ("we know now to tie down what we will keep"). This final phrase ("tie down what we will keep") can be interpreted to mean that these freed slaves will have to hold tightly to whatever freedoms they are given, as they might vanish otherwise. This section highlights the importance of a shared history, revealing the way that the speaker experiences an easy connection and comfort with another soldier, as they have a common understanding of their struggles that transcends words. Even the final note about tying down what they need to keep appears to connote a double meaning. This idea is underscored by the speaker's use of "we," as it suggests that they face a shared dilemma as freedmen in this army.
The fifth sonnet in the sequence reveals why the speaker and his fellow soldiers were brought to Fort Massachusetts. "February 1863" reveals that they are prison guards for Confederate soldiers: " We know it is our duty now to keep / white men as prisoners—rebel soldiers, / would-be masters." The speaker then delves further into the strange contradictions inherent to this position: "We're all bondsmen here, each / to the other. Freedom has gotten them / captivity. For us, a conscription / we have chosen—jailors to those who still / would have us slaves." He is taking note of the fact that these prisoners fought for their right to own people like the soldiers that are now their jailers. Stranger still, the speaker finds that this position has brought him in contact with these men once more. They are obviously prejudiced and do not trust the speaker, or any of the other freed slaves, but are forced to rely on him to write letters, as many of them are illiterate. He describes their distrust of him, even as he assists them: "Still, they are wary / of a negro writing, taking down letters. / X binds them to the page—a mute symbol / like the cross on a grave." The description of the letter "X" functioning like "the cross on a grave" hints at the fact that many of these soldiers will not survive their time at the prison. He adds that they seem concerned he is not writing what they have dictated: "I suspect they fear / I'll listen, put something else down in ink." This subtly restates the power he has as a writer, as they are afraid he is either manipulating their words or listening too closely to their conversation. It is one of the many interesting reversals the poem depicts, as this situation puts these men at the mercy of the speaker, who is himself frustrated with his position.
These sections show the speaker's variable emotional states as he progresses through his time in the unit. Each of the sonnets begins with a slight variation, in most cases, of the last line of the previous one. An example of this occurs between "December 1862" ("his story intersecting with my own") and "January 1863" ("O how history intersects—my own"). This moment demonstrates a shift in the speaker's specific subject matter from the previous owner of his journal to his journey to Fort Massachusetts, but is still taking note of the many intersections of history he experiences. This comes back most meaningfully at the sequence's conclusion when the final line ("we tread upon, forgetting. Truth be told.") ties back to the opening ("Truth be told, I do not want to forget"). These connected sections seem to serve to revisit various themes and ideas, while showing the speaker's growing disillusionment with the army. The choice to make all of these entries sonnets seems to reflect the speaker's desire to put all of these facts in their proper order, as the sonnet is a highly regimented form of verse. This formal decision also allows Trethewey to make use of the "volta," the turn that occurs, in English sonnets, in the final couplet. These moments give the speaker space to distill his experiences into a short thematic summary. An example of this can be found in the conclusion of "February 1863" when he states: "I suspect they fear / I'll listen, put something else down in ink," commenting on the distrust of the men whose dictation he takes for their letters. Finally, Trethewey also frequently uses enjambment, which allows her to more carefully maintain the syllable count in each line.
