Identity, Place and Home

TransAtlantic is a particularly haunting version of Douglass’ time in Ireland, building on academic texts of his time there and Douglass’ own reflections. There is something of the rainy, foggy mythos of Ireland that permeates the text, like the weight and presence of your clothes when they get damp.  Though Douglass feels free there, not chased by people who would place him back in bondage (or very likely worse), he is still heavy — the memory of his burdens, both his own past and his visions for the future of his people, dowsing and permeating his being like the cold of Dublin, the “huddled city.” (McCann, 49)  The juxtapositions of Douglass’ moments of freedom and moments of weight are striking within the text and interact well with one another to create a sense of Douglass’ inbetweenness, as we talked about in class. He cannot be just Douglass. He is not a man for himself. Rather he becomes an emblem for his people and the Irish people, both a hero and a specimen.  In McCann’s text Douglass wonders to himself if he is “just a curio” (McCann, 55) to the Irish, some strange other to be stared at behind glass. In class we talked about how this otherness may have more to do with his Americanness than his race, but even putting someone on a pedestal places them apart, and the Douglass of McCann’s text very clearly feels put on show — or at least that he must tread very, very carefully and always be his best self.  This edge he walks, the line of inside outsider, is key to the placelessness he develops in Ireland and also seems to be the calling card of participation in the Circum-Atlantic. The question of identity, place, and home and how they relate are central to this conception of the Atlantic and it will be interesting to see how other literary figures attempt to find their place in the crossing of that water.