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Jacob Vaark In A Mercy

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orrison’s women oriented approach of folk healing is countered in A Mercy, through the character of the blacksmith, a free black man having knowledge of folk medicine. He is serving as a catalyst in the development of the plot of the novel. He has cured Sorrow from the deadly disease of small pox, during his stay at Jacob Vaark’splace for constructing a fancy gate for his new building. He is invited again to the household of Jacob, when Rebekka becomes the victim of small pox.is the not his skill as a craftsman but the healing power that has made the women in the family after the death of Jacob Vaark to depend on him. Rebekka’s sickness is fetching danger to the security of the “three unmastered women” and “belonging to no one, became wild game for anyone” (56). Lina feared that the death of their mistress will make them more vulnerable as “female and illegal, they would be interpolers, squatters, it they stayed on after Mistress died, subject to purchase, hire, assault, abduction, exile” (56). Even Rebekka also realised in her illnessthat “the smithy’s value was without price when he cured Sorrow of whatever has struck her down” and in her deathbed prayed God to enable Florens to find out the blackman so that “he could repeat that miracle(95).His seconding coming was …show more content…

These remedies were based on the cause of the illness – be it natural or unnatural.Often medical ethics and basic philosophy of western medicine clashed with that of Africans’ whose beliefs were based on the supernatural....enslaved Africans maintained their own Afrocentric beliefs and practices associated with certain ailments and they continued to engage the services of the secret doctors. Secret doctors hid their knowledge about medicine, they administered their own remedieswhich included herbal medication and/or amulets, and carried out other healing rituals behind closed

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