An Echo In the Bone: Summary Of Act 1

An Echo in the Bone: Summary of Act 1

In Act 1 of the play An Echo in the Bone by Dennis Scott, the scene opens up with Rachel, the wife of Crew who has recently been widowed, lamenting over his death. Word around the village reveals that Crew, before his death, killed a white man. Rachel's daughter enters after her mother's mourning sporting a soon-to-be baby bump for her husband, Jacko. Sonson, Rachel's son enters as well and begins to have a heated conversation with his mother and sister-in-law. Soon after, Rattler and some village friends enter Rachel's house. After small talk and a little bit of a drum beat with Rattler's drum... the wake begins. The guests invite Crew's spirit and beckon him to make peace and go to the grave. at the wake Sonson puts on his father's clothes and begins to speak to his mother as if he were Crew himself. After this event, the play has a flashback. The play takes the reader back to the days of slavery, on a voyage on a ship on its way from Africa to the Antilles. The characters in the beginning take on a different identity in this scene. Bridgit portrays a plantation owner who has come to survey the quality of the potential workers. After being disrespected by one of the slaves, her escort resorted to cutting out the tongue of one of the slaves as a punishment. After the flash back on the ship ended. there was another flashback which took the reader to the time when the village discovered the a white man  was killed and the Crew had been missing for a few days now. The scene begins with Madam in her store complaining that the people of the village do not respect her store and the job it plays in providing for her financially because the villagers continually 'trust' items and seldom ever repay her for the items. After two villagers came into the shop to talk about the latest gossip about Crew, Rachel enters and is confronted with the ugly truth about her husband. after satisfying their insatiable need to know exactly what happened to Crew, she invited them to the wake at her house since it had been 9 days since his disappearance and she was certain that he was not alive. Again, the scene takes a flashback to the selling of three female slaves to a plantation owner. they are embarrassed in front of their potential master as he gropes them trying to decide which one he favours the most. Then as a final flash back, a Maroon(a person born free in Jamaica) meets up with an escaped slave and they engage in a conversation that propels the reader into Act 2.