The Known World

Both Henry and Moses have endured painful separation. Henry was taken from his mother’s arms at age nine and Moses was separated from his beloved Bessie when William purchased him. They seek to gain more power and control over their lives. How do their similar desires for power result in very different destinies?

The Known World highlights the little-known history of African American slaveowners and their African American slaves. One can critique the novel to say it shows that African Americans were just like their white counterparts in their eagerness to exploit slave labor. Is this a fair critique? Do the African American slaveowners treat their slaves differently than the white slaveowners described in this novel?

The story is told in scenes that move between past, present, and future; sometimes all three timeframes appear in one sentence. What is the effect of telling the story in a non-chronological way? How is the nonlinear style of the novel similar to Alice’s artwork, described at the end of the book? Why did Jones choose this nontraditional way to tell the story of Henry and the lives around him?

John Skiffington insists that he is a righteous person because he always acts within the boundaries of the law. He refuses to question the laws he has sworn to uphold. In what ways do characters cling to the outlines of the known laws to justify their behavior? Does their trust in laws ever come in conflict with their knowledge and experience?

Compare and contrast Minerva and Alice, two minor characters who are silent until the end of the story.

Jones refers to many fictional historians and research in order to include fictionalized facts and data. But he often brings the data into question. Why does Jones make history unreliable?

Education is seen as a means to success. In what way does Fern’s academy help her students, free blacks, succeed in the Known World?

Anderson Frazier retells the story of Henry Townsend and the rest in his 27-page pamphlet from his series “Curiosities and Oddities about Our Southern Neighbors.” In what ways is the novel A Known World a response to and a reframing of that fictional pamphlet, moving beyond mere “curiosity” to a deep and textured imagining of life on this fictional plantation?