Anna is Black

One of the primary topics in class discussion today was Anna's lack of action in Voyage in the Dark. We related her lack of action to many different aspects of her character, but although we mentioned her desire to be black, we did not relate it to her lack of action. I personally think that Anna is torn between her reality as a white person and her desire to be black. This division has not only given her two distinct sides to her character, but has almost divided her reality. On page 8 where she says "sometimes it was as if I were back there and as if England were a dream. At other times England was the real thing and out there was the dream, but I could never fit them together." For Anna the West Indies represent her black side and England represents her white side. Anna grew up as essentially a black child on an island with a large black population. As a child she did not have to deal with being white, and so was essentially happy and whole as a person. England in the novel is a white man's land, and Anna is thrust into it almost, if not completely, unwillingly. Now forced to live the life of a white woman, she does not know how to do it. She had taken on a black self-image growing up and the awareness of her "whiteness" has left her in a purgatorial state of adjustment. This is why she does nothing. She does not know how to be what is expected of her. It is through Walter that she begins to discover life as a white woman in England instead of as a black girl from the West Indies, though furthering herself from her true nature will almost certainly end badly.