Point of View

“Middle Passage” is written from the first-person point of view. It is narrated partially by Montez, one of two white slavers who is spared by the mutineers to steer the ship back to Cuba.

The point of view is significant because Montez writes in a documentary style of a captain’s logbook to illustrate the desperation of the enslaved people around him, showing a detachment from the horror he is participating in. For example, the first stanza contains an entry by Montez noting that “Blacks rebellious. Crew uneasy. Our linguist says / their moaning is a prayer for death” (9-10). His tone of cool surprise that people in desperate conditions are growing rebellious and search for any escape from their circumstances, even the unknown of death, can be read as callous. It is also worth noting that Montez relies on a linguist to give a direct...