Surviving Savannah

Lilly Forsyth is the wealthy young wife of Adam Forsyth and mother of a five-month-old daughter. She is trapped by societal expectations. She is a determined, quick-thinking woman who overcomes immense challenges to her and her daughter’s survival. In Chapter 30, the reader learns that Lilly had been planning to escape from Adam for months before sailing on the Pulaski: “She kept her jewelry pouch on her wrist at all times in the hope that someday she’d be given a chance to escape and would have something to sell to pay for her passage” (227). From the moment she is introduced, Lilly’s thoughts are focused on escape: “She would allow her thoughts to fade with the city’s view […] and allow her spirit to separate from her body. It was the only way she knew to survive” (25). As the Pulaski is on fire and sinking, Lilly’s sharp mind ensures her survival. The narrator says, “She handed her distressed child to Priscilla so she could tie the bag around her wrist—she would not leave without her valuables; they could mean freedom. She knew this even in the depth of fear” (63). She also recalled the way she had seen the enslaved women on Adam’s plantation tie fabric around themselves to carry a baby and asks Priscilla to help her do the same for Madeline. If she hadn’t been able to think on her feet, she would have let go of Madeline, and the baby would have died.

Lilly thinks beyond living from moment to moment and considers what she needs to do to live long-term. She considers the trip of the Pulaski to be an opportunity to escape Adam and the society that forces her to live within strict conventions. Even when she despairs that he is still alive, she is able to think quickly enough to escape with Madeline, Priscilla, and her jewels.

Lilly gradually replaces her passive, dissociative behavior with an active, take-charge attitude. When she chooses to leave for Michigan, the narrator says, “The life Lilly had chosen wasn’t easy, but she had come to see the precious value of a life lived on her own terms” (377). Without the sinking of the Pulaski, Lilly would never have taken the opportunity to take charge of her life, escape the society that dictated what she could and couldn’t do, and gain independence. By the end of Surviving Savannah, Lilly is a suffragette, fighting for women to gain more rights and freedom. Her fight against Adam and society affected her so greatly that she wants to share it with others.

Augusta Longstreet is the third protagonist introduced in Surviving Savannah. She is a single, intellectual woman. Her fiancé died not long before she was to marry him, causing Southern society to treat her like a widow. She does not have autonomy; she is seen as an extension of her brother Lamar. She feels “always wanted but never needed” (35). At the beginning of the novel, Augusta is essentially an accessory to her brother’s family. She takes care of Thomas and Charles, but it is clear that, despite being well loved, she is a background character even in her own life.

Like Lilly, she has taken on a passive role. Her gender holds her back from true independence, and it makes her feel helpless. As the men on the wreckage repair a broken lifeboat, Augusta doesn’t think she can help them. While stranded at sea, she struggles with feelings of inadequacy. She believes that she can’t do anything of use to others. However, she fights to keep her family and Henry alive, caring for them in their times of need. By Chapter 47, Augusta realizes that her presence in life matters: “Augusta was convinced her story did matter” (376). As she reads an article about Charles as an adult, she sees that her story is just as important as his. She writes her memoir, carving a place for herself in the historical narrative, to prove that even though some people, like Charles, allowed their pain to turn into cruelty, others, like her, thrived and found happiness and contentment.

Augusta’s independence helps her be more perceptive of the world she lives in. She sees that the way of life she was raised in, owning and profiting off of enslaved people, is unconscionable. She remembers something an English woman, critical of the South, had said: “Your devotion to conformity is like nothing I’ve ever seen. Despite being the most politically free people in the world, you are the least socially free I’ve ever encountered” (257). These words begin to resonate more and more with Augusta the longer she is stranded at sea. She realizes that adherence to society’s rules is a cage, and socially dictated propriety is ridiculous. As Augusta forms these conclusions, any of the pretenses that kept her and Henry apart crumble, and she gains true happiness in following her dream rather than what she believes society wants her to do.

Charles Longstreet is the deuteragonist in Augusta’s story. His story runs parallel to hers as a foil to her character. He is also one of the characters based on a real person, Charles Augustus Lamar. He is first portrayed as a noble, self-sacrificing eldest brother to the Longstreet children. When he, Augusta, and Thomas are trapped in their cabin, he promises Augusta that he will do everything he can to save them. When he returns from being washed away from the wreckage, the first thing he does is ask about his family. In addition to looking after his family, Charles makes sacrifices to keep other survivors alive. As a 14-year-old, he saves Olivia Barnsby, a woman he had never met before, while in the direst of circumstances. He also offers his ration of wine to a man on the edge of death through dehydration, sparking Augusta to call him Noble Boy. Charles is frustrated by how people, especially his aunt, put their fate in God’s hands. He comes to believe that he can only trust in himself, feeling abandoned by those meant to help him, including God: “There are no miracles, Auntie. I saved myself. No one is coming to save us, and God isn’t here” (283). As he gets older, the pain of feeling abandoned grows. Lamar ignores Charles’s attempts to connect with him in his grief. When Charles is sent to Virginia for school, he feels that he isn’t wanted, saying to his father, “You [...] wish Thomas had lived and I had died” (353).

While Augusta clings to her faith to make sense of what is happening, Charles rejects it, proclaiming: “I will not adore a god that killed my family […] I lived because I fought to live. No one saved me. No one will ever save me” (354). Because Charles has to fight to survive the Pulaski disaster, he devalues the lives of people who, from his perspective, did not fight hard enough. This devaluation allows Charles to do terrible things he might not have done otherwise. He could follow the path of Augusta instead of growing bitter and cynical. He could rely on family and value every breath after being saved. However, his story serves to teach those in the present, like Everly, that history and humanity are filled with contradictions and duality, and to embrace the good they must also acknowledge the bad.