The Red Rover is a great book for me because it's a historical novel written in 1824 that takes place in Newport, RI in 1756. The character of the Red Rover is a pirate who sails in a ship called the Dolphin which travels under several guises. At the novel's opening it is lying in the harbor as a (drumroll please)...slave ship! Cooper plays with this comparison between the dubious character of the slave ship and the feared yet largely mysterious character of the pirate ship at several times during the novel. Slaving is by turns referred to as honest and shameful. Piracy is roundly condemned yet sympathizers are found at every turn. And of course there is the question on how free all sailors are , black or white, at sea.
Scipio Africanus is one of the first sailors we meet. He's not exactly a slave, but he's also clearly not free. He refers to his companion Richard "Dick" Pip as a "Master" and Cooper, through Pip, makes reference to his "degraded" and "ignorant" state. Yet, as the novel progresses, we gradually become acquainted with Scipio's sailing expertise. Throughout the novel he remains something of a mystery. Cooper plays with both the practice of naming slaves after Classical figures and assumptions concerning black intellect by repeatedly setting Scipio up to be object of derision only to have him reveal himself to be more canny than those around him realize.
My tentative plan for this chapter is to analyzee Cooper's treatment of piracy in this book alongside Poe's in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. What I'm thinking right now is that looking books that use sea tales to arrive at different conclusions regarding the lessons of the Revolution will be a good way to shore up my arguments regarding using sea fiction as political critique. But it's always risky to go into a chapter with too narrow an agenda. And there is so much in The Rover Rover to explore that I don't want to overlook anything.
