Anansi by Alastair Campbell goes beyond a creative retelling of history exploring the common

traits of humanity with the play's two characters he explores the common traits and differences
between the boy and the girl and how both the boy and the girl talk about Christianity and
religion to justify and challenge the slave trade system. To comment on the effectiveness of one
device used by Campbell in the play to explore the oppression of enslaved Africans.
Their commonalities between the boy and the girl are that they are both children with their
destinies planned before them, both scared and confused in search of answers with Pages 7
and 8 of the play stating that the boy in the cabin said “They looked just like people to me. But
they were tied together. They looked frightened. Why…?” He was confused as to why his father,
the captain, was doing these things to the Africans he had never seen these types of things
happening before and the girl on the deck of the ship said “where are we? Are we going to die?
What is this place, with all the people tied together and so much crying and fear?...” She was
panicking in confusion about what was going on and asking a multitude of questions and the
thought of never seeing her family ever again. Both wish to challenge the slave system, and
both feel absent from their parental figure, with the girl away from her mother and tied up in the
hold of the ship and the boy has no emotional connection with his father lastly, both feel
trapped, the boy felt trapped mentally than physically and the girl feel trapped physically than
mentally.
The differences between the boy and the girl are their statuses. The boy has a higher status
than the girl who has a lower status on the ship tied up in the hold while the boy is in the cabin.
Next is the race between the boy and the girl. They are different races; the boy is white, and the
girl is Black. Then the boy speaks English while the girl speaks her native language which the
sailor could not understand on page 8 of the play “...Some heathen tongue..:” the narrator says
“She calls out to the deckhands as they pass. But they do not understand her language.” Then
the caring relationship with the parental figure while the boy is in an abusive relationship with his
father the girl is in a caring relationship, she has made it upon the woman to be her mother on
the ship.
Their opinions about Christianity and religion justify and challenge the slave trade system
between the boy and the girl. The boy is confused with god since god he is a man who is always
good and never dies, asking the sailor what colour is God with page 31 of the play the boy says
“Well if he's a man like they say that's always good and never dies, then what colour is he?” the
sailor said, “all I know is what they told me as a lad, and that's what we’re all of us made in his
image.” So, the boy questions the sailor by asking “So that man they threw at sea today…,”
“Listen! That means that man looks just as much like God as you and I”. The sailor said “No, No
You’re out of your depth here boy. Slaves are different…more like beasts, or so they reckon.”
Basically, saying the slaves are not an image made by God but more like a beast from the devil,
but the white people are an image made by God and not by the devil. The girl however believes
in God by Anansi's stories and the hope of getting out of the ship.
One device used by Campbell in the play to explore the oppression of the enslaved
Africans is situational Irony where things are the opposite of what there seems to be. The title of
the first act “The Good Ship Hope West African Coast, 1791” has an Irony instead of hoping the
ship brings hopelessness to the Africans and there is nothing “good” about this ship it enables
the evil practice of slavery.
 In retrospect, Campbell explores the common traits of humanity with the play's two characters
he explores the common traits and differences between the boy and the girl respectively, the
varying thoughts and questions from both the boy and the girl were discovered as well as a
device which captures the oppression of the enslaved Africans.