Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"

Early on in her visits with Kossola, Hurston brings a basket of Georgia peaches as a gift. Peaches appear again later when Kossola helps Hurston pick peaches from his garden. As a gift and a shared activity, the peaches/peach picking serve as a symbol of Hurston’s growing friendship with Kossola. Throughout the book, they share various fruit—watermelon, for instance—eating together as they talk. Hurston and Kossola are able to bond over fruit during the time they spend together.

In addition to helping establish a bond between Kossola and Hurston, the peaches evoke Kossola’s garden, in which he takes great pride. Some days, he turns Hurston away because he needs to tend his garden; other days, he gives her a tour of the things he’s growing. The garden is important to Kossola, especially because tending it was one of the few physical labors he could still manage after his train accident many years earlier. Kossola spends most of his time either tending the church, as the sexton, or tending his garden. This is significant, too, in light of his being free after many years of being enslaved. The peaches, then, evoke a garden that’s the product of his own hard work, the benefits of which Kossola himself can reap. It’s a symbol of his freedom, to benefit from his own labor rather than having to relinquish that produce to a self-proclaimed “master.” It’s even more representative of freedom that he can pass this garden, and this sense of freedom, down to future generations, which Chapter 2 alludes to when Kossola shares peaches with his beloved granddaughters.

Peaches appear again in Chapter 12. Hurston is leaving Kossola for the last time, and he sends her away with a peach. As a symbol of their friendship, the peach has a powerful impact as they say farewell. Additionally, the peach serves to provide narrative closure, having first appeared near the beginning of the text and making its final appearance at the end.

Family is important to Kossola, who firmly believes that he can’t tell his own story without also discussing his family. He says:

In de Affica soil I cain tellee you ‘bout de son before I tellee you ‘bout de father; and derefore, you unnerstand me, I cain talk about de man who is father (et te) till I tellee you bout de man who he father to him, (et, te, te, grandfather) now, dass right ain’ it? (48).

He gives Hurston a robust description of his grandfather’s and father’s lives in the early chapters. Later in the book, when he has his own family in the US, he’s sure to give the African and American names of his wife and all of his children and describe how each of them lived and died. While the concept of family is mired in grief for Kossola—first torn from his family by war and slavery and then torn from them by death—he cherishes them.

Kossola’s family values are part of what make his loneliness so painful in the final years of his life. Various times in Barracoon he interrupts his own narration to cry, telling Hurston some variation of “I so lonely” (122). Kossola tragically outlived his entire nuclear family, leaving him alone. While Hurston can never replace his family, her visits are welcome because she keeps him company.