In the side of God. But the sea takes Newton back when, in standard practice of the time, he is kidnapped and pressed into service by the British Navy. St. John doesn't ridicule the rich ironies in Newton's life, he meditates on them because he knows that slavery isn't over, we are all still caught in its story right here. Here St. John pauses in the story, balancing the chronology with more dream interpretations, more relevant ancient wisdoms, and achieves strong dramatic tension. For a life without sin Is no life at all.
Newton finally leaves off slaving for a plush job in Liverpool.
John will change his dreams, now, from the menstrual dreams of the slaver to the menthol dreams of the minister. Showing the devastating evil we do, like a storm, is only a stepping stone to something else. St. John has followed Hayden's poetic techniques in masterfully blending historical details of the slave trade with acute, contemporary perspectives on the fuller meanings of those facts. Though Seattle writer Charles Johnson's rousing novel about a free black making the bad choice of stowing away on a slave ship has the trappings of a historical novel set in the 1830s, I believe it's on the St. John's and Hayden's tack, projecting contemporary wisdom about black and white history in the person of Rutherford Calloun back into the time of the middle passage in order to understand it anew. St. John also puts the tragedy of the middle passage and the enigma of John Newton into context with the other poems in Dreamer.