When Homer and Ada escape Southerland plantation into the swamp, Ada wonders if “monsters” exist, and at first, Homer understands this as her overactive imagination. However, “monsters” of various forms do exist: The siblings are actively fleeing overseer Stokes, the Crumbs, and enslavement itself. The “monsters” in the swamp—snakes and other unseen threats—are not nearly as daunting as enslavement. In fact, Freewater embraces the swamp as “Mother Swamp,” a safe haven that provides all they need to survive and remain free. Whereas Stokes’s brother-in-law Ron refuses to return to the swamp, saying “the devil himself couldn’t live in that place” (76), Homer knows the “devil” (enslavement) doesn’t reside in the swamp. Having never left Freewater, Sanzi and other children born there speculate “two-headed men, turtles without shells, and skeletons that rose from the dead” (vii-viii) exist outside. While inaccurate, this speculation succeeds in framing enslavement as a truly inhumane system.

Through Homer, Ada, and others’ flashbacks to their enslavement, as well as Rose and Anna’s current enslavement, the system is framed as difficult to escape. Plantations are heavily staffed and surrounded by either treacherous swampland or white strangers, eager to threaten and capture Black people lacking freedom passes.