Signifying (Non)Linguistic and Subliminal Spirituality: Caryl Phillips’ Crossing the River

In “West,” the second narrative of his 1993 novel, Crossing the River, author Caryl Phillips writes the life story of Martha, a former slave in the American South. Phillips privileges Martha’s recounting of her own trials. At times, Martha’s idiom seems to demonstrate an interspersed, omniscient perspective, and she shares in the production of the text. What results is the viability of Martha’s spirit: Phillips uses her suffering to demonstrate her resilience. The author creates verbal and non-verbal cues that project Martha and the narrative into various states of (divine) consciousness. This style shows that Martha operates from a very sophisticated system of signs in which she uses emotions instead of words to relay, or to “signify” as Henry Louis Gates would suggest, alternate meanings. Martha’s minimal use of language and her reliance on other signs to understand and create meaning contrast with the biblical character of Martha that Phillips’ text enjoins. The biblical Martha actually misses or misinterprets cues of meaning. “West” augments the novel’s greater aim of showing the interrelatedness of races on a global scale, allowing the author’s Martha to define “freedom” through her dreams with the help of a woman of another race.