Unnamed Enslaved Servant

The unnamed man who was Issetibbeha's slave and body servant for twenty-three years, and so (according to a tribal custom) must be killed and buried with his master, is the story's central character. He is identified as a "Guinea man," a term which can cover the entire region of west Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. He was brought as a slave to the U.S. from "Kamerun" at age 14 (327). He became Issetibbeha's "servant" not long after that. At the time of his death he is forty. He is described as having "a flat nose, a close, small head; the inside corners of his eyes showed red a little, and his prominent gums were a pale bluish red above his square, broad teeth" (327).