ABSTRACT
In 1648, a merchant ship from Sweden makes the same journey. On board is a young Johan Klasson Tay, a cabin boy who is forced to escape after being accused of mutiny. After jumping ship, he floats ashore in Cabo Corso – a Swedish colony located in modern-day Ghana – where he encounters the Ayoko clan. Johan Klasson Tay is now referred to as Johan Vilde – Johan Savage – as he has fully embraced another way of living among people deemed uncivilized in European eyes. In the cases of The Phantom and Johan Vilde, the reader encounters two different ways in which Africa and the continent's black population are used. Though Johan Vilde's ability to pass as native remains partly suspended by his physical difference from the rest of the clan, he does perform a long-standing European and exoticist dream of being able to ‘pass' as the Other.
