In class discussions about the Transatlantic, we have covered countless different aspects, living and nonliving; we’ve discussed how language, land, social hierarchy, culture, and other things are affected in the exchange of people and ideas that coincide with the Black and Green Atlantic. To be quite honest, I thought we had covered every possible feature. However, one passage in The Commitments made me realize there had been something left undiscussed:
“Soul is dynamic. It can’t be caught.It can’t be chained. They could chain the slaves but they couldn’t chain their soul…Soul is the rhythm of the people…The Labor Party doesn’t have soul…The people o’ Dublin, our people, remember need soul” (Doyle 39).
This passage, while not directly related to the Transatlantic, left me wondering where souls lie in the Transatlantic experience. When individuals leave their homes to travel to new countries or continents, where they likely face intense discrimination and cultural abuse, do their souls travel with them and endure this pain? Or do they alternatively “stay” in their original home, left behind in the transatlantic experience? In my opinion, this excerpt from The Commitments could be interpreted to argue either alternative. If a soul can’t be chained, it cannot be chained to its homeland, which suggests that it moves with its owner to their new home, despite the challenges that lay in its path. On the other hand, if a soul cannot be chained, it cannot be chained to its owner, and may not want to leave the place it is being forcefully removed from, either from famine (Green Atlantic) or the slave trade (Black Atlantic). The permeability of souls poses an interesting question in defining the Transatlantic: if souls can be left behind in their original homes, are the people who make a transatlantic journey ever able to find themselves again? Or will the part of them left behind prevent themselves from fully assimilating to their new life?