Blog 1

Slave Moth written by Thylias Moss is a story about a slave girl named Varl living on a small plantation owned by Master Peter Perry. It seems that Master Perry has a taste for the odd things in life, going so far as to collect an albino slave girl named Pearl, and a midget slave named Sully. Master Perry even goes so far to turn his grandmother Irene Perry into a tourist attraction. The grandmother dies on the porch while drinking whiskey and this apparently leads to a collection of bees moving into her mouth and turning her into some kind of human hive. Master Perry even goes as far as having his dwarf slave Sully harvest the Grandmothers mouth for the honey that is able to be collected. That scene was one of the scenes that stayed with me through the book and for me it is very indicative of the strangeness that is Master Perry.
I did have some confusion however during one of the more important parts of the book, the scene where Varl is in the woods stitching together her “cocoon” when Master Perry comes upon her. For me this was the only part that I had some trouble following her particular style for the book. At times I had some confusion as to who was speaking during this part and what really was going on. The chapter for this was called The Harvesting of Mysterious Ways. Not only was it a little confusing it was also one of the best illustrations of the power play going on behind the scenes between Master and Slave. Who can push whom, and how far they can take things and still not end up on the hanging rope.
Some issues I had with the narrative would have to include how Thylias Moss wraps up the end of her story. The entire time I was reading the novel I was waiting for Varl to attempt to escape, to flee from the slave situation. And while she does talk about fleeing Varl never really escapes from the plantation that ends up bearing her name. Even at the end of the story it is not completely clear to me whether or not Varl even is able to escape with her lover Dob. Apparently Dob has a stash of guns to be used for slave rebellion, however shots are never fired. Instead she just writes that the slaves just end up not doing the duties of a slave anymore. The albino Pearl stops tending to the chicken and Sully quits looking after the livestock. All Perry has to say about this however is “Peter Perry noticed and complimented the strangeness. Marveled at what it had accomplished-perhaps his ways had helped-“. I do not understand why a slave owner would be so calm and collected about his slaves no longer being slaves. That just seems like a rather large investment in both time and money that he just lets go. But I guess that is what sets him apart from the other slave owners mentioned in the novel. He is not deliberately callous or really cruel to the slaves under his watch. From what the story mentioned they seemed to be well fed and taken care of, and I know this is no excuse for his being a slave owner but at least he is not cutting letters into his slaves or making them burn themselves in the face with a hot iron.