Chapter 30: Conduction
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The chapter opens with the narrator hearing a deep breath and turning slowly, dreading what they might see. They recall a specific memory: the partner once vanished while waiting on the stairs, and the narrator tried to grab their shirt to prevent a backward fall, but failed and cried out for neighbors who never came. The narrative then weaves in references to a Hollywood movie about Harriet Tubman that depicts her protective visions. A novel in which Tubman time travels uses the term "conduction." The narrator also mentions Emily Dickinson, a biographer who attributed Dickinson's reclusiveness to “spells”; the narrator imagines Dickinson writing “Hope is the thing with feathers” in her room. Returning to the present, the narrator and partner are now parents, postcoital, sharing water, watching the ending of an intense TV show in which someone finally speaks up. When the narrator turns to the partner in recognition, they see it is no longer the same person. They fall together onto the couch. The narrator compares this to the scene in Octavia Butler’s Kindred where Dana falls into the river and encounters Rufus, declaring, “I’ll do anything.”
Key Events
- The narrator hears a breath and turns carefully, afraid to see something.
- Flashback: The narrator recalls a moment when the partner vanished while standing on the stairs; the narrator tried to catch them but failed, and no one heard their cries.
- References to a Harriet Tubman movie and a novel where Tubman time travels, using the term “conduction.”
- Mention of Emily Dickinson’s “spells” and her poem “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
- Present-time scene: The narrator and partner are parents, postcoital, watching a TV show. The partner seems changed.
- The narrator and partner fall together onto the couch.
- Allusion to Kindred: the narrator identifies with Dana and the partner with Rufus, ending with “I’ll do anything.”
Character Development
- Narrator: The narrator moves through fear, memory, and present moment. They are hyperaware of change and loss. The reference to Kindred suggests a willingness to sacrifice or endure anything to maintain connection, even as the partner becomes unrecognizable.
- Partner: The partner is depicted as vanishing or falling, both physically and metaphorically. Their identity shifts; they are no longer the person the narrator once recognized. This transformation is central to the chapter’s emotional weight.
Themes, Symbols, or Motifs
- Conduction: The chapter’s title and the borrowed term from Tubman fiction imply a form of transmission or transport—either visionary or traumatic. The narrator’s memories and literary references all “conduct” emotion through time and space.
- Disappearance and Falling: The partner vanishes on the stairs; later they fall together. Falling symbolizes loss of control, descent into shared fate.
- Historical Parallels: Harriet Tubman’s visions and Emily Dickinson’s reclusiveness are juxtaposed with the narrator’s domestic moment. This suggests that personal experiences of fear, creativity, and love are linked to broader histories of survival and isolation.
- Artistic Creation: Dickinson’s poem about hope is evoked in a context of despair. The act of writing (or storytelling) becomes a means of processing the uncanny.
- The Gaze and Recognition: The narrator turns to see something but doesn’t want to see. The final moment of turning to the partner and failing to recognize them highlights the rupture in intimacy.
Why This Chapter Matters
Chapter 30 serves as a poignant climax in Golden Ax where personal loss is refracted through cultural and literary memory. The term “conduction” ties the chapter to the book’s larger inquiry into how history, trauma, and art move through individuals. By weaving references to Harriet Tubman, Emily Dickinson, and Octavia Butler, the chapter situates the narrator’s intimate crisis within a continuum of Black women’s experiences of vision, confinement, and survival. The final allusion to Kindred recasts the relationship as one of power, dependency, and desperation—ending with a vow that blurs love and servitude.
Study Questions and Answers
1. What is the significance of the term “conduction” in this chapter?
The term is borrowed from a novel about Harriet Tubman that depicts her time travel. In the poem, conduction suggests a supernatural or psychic transmission of visions, memories, or trauma. The narrator’s own experience—hearing a breath, recalling a fall, then falling into a changed partner—becomes a kind of conduction, linking personal memory to historical storytelling.
2. How does the narrator’s comparison to Kindred deepen the meaning of the final scene?
By identifying with Dana and the partner with Rufus, the narrator acknowledges an unequal, even coercive bond. In Kindred, Dana is repeatedly pulled back to the antebellum South to save her ancestor Rufus. The narrator’s phrase “I’ll do anything” echoes Dana’s desperation, suggesting that love here involves self-sacrifice and a willingness to remain bound to someone who has become dangerous or alien.
3. What role do Emily Dickinson and Harriet Tubman play in the chapter?
Both figures are invoked as women who experienced altered states—visions for Tubman, “spells” for Dickinson—that isolated them yet also fueled their creativity and resistance. Their inclusion broadens the narrator’s personal crisis into a meditation on how women, especially Black women, have historically navigated fear, loss, and artistic expression. The narrator sees their own struggle through these lenses, finding resonance across time.