ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Captain Singleton for its articulation of anxiety about the many slaveries to which man was prey during the eighteenth century. The enslavements expressed both physically and metaphorically throughout the novel demonstrate concepts in flux as ideas of trade, nationality, and the nature of man clashed. Sociologist Orlando Patterson, in his ground-breaking studies Slavery and Social Death, has offered literary critics a vocabulary with which to discuss and understand slavery. Comparative nature of his work falls to literary scholars to provide the nuance for Patterson's highly useful and influential terminology. The chapter examines Captain Singleton as an exemplar for expanding the idea of 'natal alienation' as a condition that affects slaves but also those on the peripheries of society. This expansive definition allows for a better understanding of how the character might flow through different forms of enslavement-freedom and unfreedom; physical and metaphorical bondage throughout the course of his life.
