Memory and love and language all come together to lift these two far beyond their dehumanizing world, if only for the briefest of moments in this generations-long story. And the main tensions in this story are between the generations rather than between black and white. A complete day needs both light and dark. The day cannot be broken in two to leave each half to itself. Nor can the master hope to rule the day and the night along with it forever.
Slavery is the long day of the master over the slave and of nights turned to days.
The white overseer prays that his son will not follow in his footsteps, but he does, and ends by respecting the old slave over his father. The old slave teaches his son reason, but then tries to quell the spirit he helped nurture. Both the overseer's daughter and her pupil are dragged away from their books, he on pain of death, she to parade about the room with Shakespeare balanced on her head, in an effort to make her walk like a lady. The absurd extent to which they are all locked together is shown up when the daughter idly remarks that she, her father, the old slave and his son all share the same name, Whitechapel, as the slaves were named after the owner. Every person touched by slavery lives a life in semi-darkness, life and love and humanity held back at every turn by its brutal limitations.