Kit plans to die by suicide with Washington

Big Kit’s plan to die by suicide with Washington is a response to enslavement at Faith Plantation and an act of care shaped by her belief that death could restore them to freedom in their ancestral homeland. She tells the boy they will die together and tries to prepare him for the prospect. Yet the plan remains unfulfilled: Big Kit delays, and her own explanation makes clear that timing and ritual matter. The later account of Washington’s childhood presents the plan as both a fierce expression of maternal protection and a measure of the choices slavery has taken from them.

Background and belief

The plan takes shape after Erasmus Wilde arrives as the new master. Washington recalls recognizing at once that Wilde owns the enslaved people around him, their lives and deaths alike. Big Kit’s reaction is physical and immediate: Washington feels her shudder. He later understands that this was when she calmly resolved to kill herself and him.

The belief behind her decision is not a simple wish for death. Big Kit follows an ancient faith rooted, as Washington understands it, in Africa’s high river lands. In that belief, the dead are reborn whole in their homelands and walk free again. Washington remembers her teaching him that death was a door; the arrival of the new master made that belief newly urgent, like a poison entering a well. Her plan makes the possibility of return to Dahomey inseparable from the prospect of escape from the plantation’s violence.

The plan and its meaning to Washington

One night, Big Kit tells Washington plainly that they will do it quickly and that it will not hurt. Lying together in their hut, she asks whether dying frightens him. Washington answers that it does not, provided it does not frighten her. His response is an effort to be brave for her: her arm lies protectively over him in the dark. The scene frames the plan not as an abstract doctrine but as a decision shared between a child and the person who cares for him, with Big Kit’s reassurance and Washington’s willingness bound together.

She also gives the idea a practical, almost everyday expression. She tells him that when a person is free, he can set down his shovel and go. The image links freedom to release from forced labor, but their proposed route to it is death, not a choice available in life. Washington says he wants to see Big Kit’s homeland and walk with her in Dahomey as a free person. His hope reveals what the plan promises him: not only an end to plantation life, but a life of belonging beside her in the place she calls home.

Delay and ritual

Although Big Kit announces her intention, she does not act immediately. The days pass while Faith becomes harsher, and Washington cannot understand why she waits. One evening she takes him into her small vegetable garden. He sees a sharp, rusted hoe blade and begins to tremble, but she has brought him there to show him the carrots beginning to sprout. On another night she wakes him and leads him through the grass to a dead palm tree. This time the purpose is to warn him not to speak of their intention: if anyone hears, she says, they will truly be separated. Her secrecy reflects the danger of their position as well as the fact that the plan depends on staying together.

Big Kit eventually explains the terms of the delay. The act must be done under the right moon and with the right words, because otherwise the gods cannot be summoned. Her insistence gives the plan a ritual structure: she is not simply postponing an action, but waiting for the conditions she believes will make it effective. Washington, who wants to go with her to Dahomey, does not yet understand why those conditions matter. His memory preserves the gap between a child’s urgency and Big Kit’s deliberate preparation.

Plantation violence and the threat to the plan

The surrounding deaths sharpen the danger. Other enslaved people die by suicide, including two older Saltwaters who share Big Kit’s belief in rebirth in their ancestral lands. After the younger William dies, Erasmus Wilde responds by making a public example of him. Wilde declares that no person can be reborn without his head and threatens to do the same to every new suicide, warning the enslaved that they will never see their countries if they continue to kill themselves. His threat directly attacks the hope on which Big Kit’s plan rests: he aims to make even death serve the master’s control.

Washington sees despair in Big Kit’s face as she looks toward William’s remains displayed on a stake. The account does not say that this spectacle causes her to abandon the plan, nor does it show her carrying it out. Instead, it places her earlier resolve against a new force of intimidation. The ruler who claims ownership over the enslaved also tries to dictate what their deaths can mean, while Big Kit’s belief holds open another destination beyond the plantation.

Retrospective significance

Washington recounts the decision years later with the uncertainty that shapes his memory of Faith. He says that the nature of what happened shifts and warps over time, and that as a boy he was terrified and confused. That retrospective caution matters: he can identify the moment when Big Kit resolved on their deaths and recall her words and preparations, but the account does not turn his childhood understanding into a complete explanation of everything she intended.

Later, Washington imagines what Big Kit endured before and during her arrival in Barbados, the conditions of the crossing, and the labor that followed. He also recognizes that he left her behind for Titch and gradually forgot the sound of her voice. This later knowledge deepens the emotional cost of the earlier plan without changing its stated outcome: Big Kit meant to take Washington with her, waited for the right moment and ritual, and the surviving evidence does not establish that the two died together. Her intention remains a stark measure of both her love for him and the violence that narrowed their imagined path to freedom to death.