“You can try your damnedest not to worsen it.”

“You can try your damnedest not to worsen it” is Titch’s concise answer to Washington’s doubt that anyone can know the truth of another person’s life or suffering. The line shifts the conversation from impossible certainty to a practical moral responsibility: understanding may fail, but the choice to refrain from compounding another’s pain remains.

The Exchange

Washington looks down at the dusty floor before asking what the truth of any life can be, adding that even the person living it may not be able to say. He then tells Titch that no one can know the true nature of another’s suffering. Titch does not dispute that limit. Instead, he answers that a person can make every effort not to worsen it.

The reply’s force comes from its modest scale. It does not promise that suffering can be repaired, or that another person’s experience can be fully grasped. It identifies a responsibility that survives those limits: not to intensify the harm already borne by someone else.

Context and Ethical Weight

The exchange takes place as Washington and Titch confront their past, including the cruelty they inflicted on Philip. Titch acknowledges that they were cruel to him; Washington’s answer broadens the reckoning from this particular harm to the difficulty of claiming knowledge of another’s suffering. Titch’s response keeps that uncertainty from becoming an excuse for inaction.

The line also resonates with Washington’s experience of racialized treatment beyond the plantation. Captain Benedikt calls him property and a slave even after Titch presents him as a scientific illustrator and personal assistant. Later, in Nova Scotia, Washington is threatened by a man who grabs him by the throat; although bystanders identify the assailant as a local brawler, the attack deepens Washington’s fear of being hunted and returned to slavery. During the voyage to England, a passenger says that he belongs below deck with the animals, prompting Goff’s visible outrage and his increasingly forceful responses to insults. These episodes make the distinction between knowing another’s suffering and worsening it more than an abstract one: prejudice and control repeatedly compound Washington’s vulnerability.

Meaning and Recurrence

Titch’s statement is not a claim that good intentions erase injury. Its emphasis falls instead on effort: even when the full truth of another life is inaccessible, conduct can still be judged by whether it adds to that life’s burdens. In the final gesture of the exchange, Washington rises and gently places a hand on Titch’s shoulder. The touch does not settle their history, but it follows the principle the line names: restraint and care can begin without complete understanding.