Any_Known_Blood

Any Known Blood “Love makes a family” - Gigi Kaeser Everybody is born with a family, but some are unfortunate to lose their family in the dawn of their lives, unfortunate to lose the warmth and care of a family. They are left with a thirst for love in a drought land of crisis. But nothing can quench their thirst for love, nor can anyone replace the love of a family. We should feel fortunate to have a family. We should feel blessed to have the love of our family members. Any Known Blood is a novel that communicates to us about the importance of having a family and the great value it holds. Family is beyond any race, it is not about mixing different race or living under the same roof but it is the genuine love inside one’s family. In the novel, “Any Known Blood”, the author Lawrence Hill suggest that the love is the root of having an intact family through any crisis. Langston Cane I does not have the privilege to be with his family and is sold to other master to work on their barn. He lives a dreadful life of a slave but was successful in running away through the Underground Railroad, so a man with no love of a family to begin with struggle having a family of his own. From his memoir that he later gives to his son, we find him talking to himself before abandoning his family to join the John Brown’s raid. He ponders, “I was not made for Oakville. I was not made for marriage. I was not made for church and children and unwavering employment.” (Hill.473) The above citation shows how Langston Cane really feels about having a family even though he loves his wife and his children. It reveals that Langston Cane is not committed to the relationship, not only to his wife but to his children too. At some point it also shows his regret of marrying Matilda. Langston Cane himself is to blame for the crisis the family will go through in the future without him to support them. Langston Cane II experiences a great deal of hardship when his father leaves him with no love behind and his mother; the only source of their love, dies when he is still a child. “She died on a Wednesday morning with her eyes open.” (416) Here Langston Cane V is writing about the family history of his great grandfather. The above citation reveals that Langston Cane II’s mother leaves the brothers when they needed her the most; to endure the hard times looming ahead of them. They are anguish by the death of their mother. It shows the family crisis that Langston Cane goes through in his young days. Langston Cane’s father is the cause for this entire crisis because he is a selfish man. He should have chose family before himself and share some love with them. If he has given some love to them, they could have been an intact family. Langston Cane III has a great family; he is loved by his parents, brothers and sisters. That’s why he is successful in his professional life as well as his personal life. He loves Rose and they make a great family together but their love is affected by the war. In a letter that he wrote to Rose, he said, “At war, I swore that when I returned, I’d never spend another minute away from you. Yet we’ve been apart more after the war, it seems, than we were during it.” (189) The letter gives light to their relationship after it is affected by the war. The war is personified as the root of the entire crisis that his family is going through. The cause of the problem is Langston failure at getting a good job and Rose spoiled by her parents comfort life so much so that she can’t live in Langston’s parsonage. Their family is not devoid of any love but sometimes the environment or the atmosphere inside the house challenge the love in a family, challenge them to be an intact family. Langston Cane IV is happy that he married Dorothy Perkins and they love each other unconditionally. But his family especially; Millicent, feels betrayed by this marriage. “Let it be known that by marrying out of the race, my father was betraying black woman.” (5) The citation is told to us by Langston Cane V but it is actually from the perspective of Millicent. She is angry at her brother for marrying a white woman and that eventually leads to an estrangement. The key word in the citation is the marriage and you can see the irony as the marriage is the cause of breaking Langston Cane family apart but at the same time he is building a new family with Dorothy Perkins. The marriage leaves Langston Cane estranged from his sister Millicent. Family does not sees difference between any races, all it sees is the love that holds the family together like Langston Cane IV and Dorothy. Because of the genuine love they have an intact family together. Langston Cane V does have an intact family but the relationship with his father is always deteriorating. When the family is having a dinner at Oakville, he father says, “Try thinking about taking a job and not getting fired.” (56) The citation was taken after Langston Cane V loses his job. After that when Langston Cane V tell his family about going to Baltimore to write a novel about his family, his father get mad and says, “You’ll come back here out of money, out of luck, and of the job circuit. You’re just hiding from your own life.” (57) The above two citations reveal that Langston IV loves his son. It shows the growing concern of a father regarding the career of his son or in a broader way the life of his son. Langston Cane IV loves his son but Langston Cane V doesn’t feel the love until he understands it. We can see that most of their families are not intact; in fact all of their families are hit by crisis either by the natural environment/ atmosphere surrounding them or the actions of all the Langston Cane’s and their relation between some particular members of the family. The novel begins with throwing the light on the family crisis of Langston Cane V and then it moves backward and the crisis of the rest of the family is viewed through the novel that Langston Cane V is writing. We begin a journey back to the history with Langston Cane V and on the road back to his family history he started to understand the meaning of a family and slowly started to realize the value it holds. The history of his family plays a great deal in strengthening his present family and at the end he is successful in making a new bond with his father, breaking the ice between Aunt Milli and his father, starting a new chapter in his life with Annette and reuniting Yoyo with his long lost love. He makes an intact family with a new love he found along the journey back to his family history. .