Substantive #2

The Athenian Thesis Can Stay in Ancient Greece

In The Truth About Awiti, CP Patrick creates a dichotomy where each character internally believes that they are actors of justice, but in the eyes of others, they are seen as following the Athenian thesis by using the power they have to dominate over others. In general, people don’t embark upon an action unless they believe for some reason that the action is the correct one to take in order to pursue a just cause. However, each character has their own interpretation of what a correct action is depending on their morals. This is furthered by the Cambridge Dictionary’s definition of justice as “the condition of being morally correct or fair” which again invites interpretation depending on how the individual defines their morals. 

The obvious villains in the book are the slave traders to the readers and other characters in the book, but they don’t view themselves that way. Jaques, a retired slave trader, wrote to his close mentee that “God has already determined his [the slave’s] fate. It is undisputed the Africans are preordained to a life of slavery” (45). The slave traders believe that they are following God’s will which is considered to most just will there is. Therefore, they view themselves as followers of a natural—“preordained”—order which implies their motivations come from a religious justice rather than a want to use their power. Of course, the actions that they take are deranged and demented. To the Africans and the readers, the slave traders are viewed as exercising their will over others in order to subjugate Africans and make them slaves. In that sense, the slave traders do portray the Athenian thesis. Ansa, a slave whose village was invaded by the slave traders, recollects his story by noting “They carried powerful weapons we had ever seen. Loud bangs echoed throughout the village…our men fell to the ground with holes in their flesh” (31). The guns were the slave traders’ power and they were used to subjugate Africans. Ansa and his village don’t have access to the slave traders’ religious motivations so they judge the slave traders based on what they see: a weird-looking group of people violently exercising their power to further their means. This parallel instances of following an Athenian thesis and not serves to complicate the narrative about the slave trade, but also highlights how every character is beyond the simple categorizations of good and bad.

The complication is seen with slaves’ actions, too. Francine, when given the power to go against her masters, chooses to do so in the name of justice which means, for her, power and justice are intermixed and cannot be separated. She states her mission as “I was determined to become a female warrior who would fight for the rights of slaves” (57). Her desire to be a “warrior”—to be a person with power—comes out of the lack of justice she sees in her life. By poisoning her masters, she feels that she is part of the revolution to free her people which is her interpretation of justice. Without her desire for justice, Francine would have never sought out power. Of course, the slave masters, who do not have access to Francine’s motivations, view Francine as using her power to kill them when they are defenseless which agrees with the Athenian thesis of using power regardless of concerns about justice.

The interconnections between power and justice for both the slave traders and Francine, in that they both use power to attain justice—however they define it, challenges the Athenian thesis. Only in certain situations where one point of view is lost can the argument be made that the slave traders and Francine fully apply the Athenian thesis in their actions. Therefore, CP Patrick challenges her readers to go beyond stagnant and easy categorizations of good and bad in order to better understand the true complexity of human nature and actions. Every character in this book engages in both good and bad actions, yet at the end, readers are still confused about how to feel and label these characters which is the point; the world has progressed in such a way that consent reanalysis of actors need to occur for any judgments to be passed.