Atar Gull ou l'Histoire d'un Esclave Modèle (Atar Gull or the Tale of a Model Slave) is an 1831 novel by the French author Eugene Sue. It chronicles the tale of Atar Gull, son of the chieftain of the Little Namaquas tribe of west Africa, his enslavement, and his revenge against all those who wronged him (and then some).
A comic book adaptation by Fabien Nury and Bruno was released in 2011.
Tropes from both versions:
- Accidental Misnaming: "Atar Gull" comes out as "Targu" from Will's French landlady.
- An Arm and a Leg: Karina/Narina loses an arm in the sugar mill when it gets caught in the millstones. Atar Gull hacks it off to save her life, and receives only half the prescribed punishment for damaging his master's property as he was (apparently) trying to save it.
- And I Must Scream: After suffering a stroke and becoming bedridden, Tom Will is utterly powerless to tell the truth about Atar Gull.
- Animal Assassin: Atar Gull uses a snake to murder Tom Will's daughter Jenny on her wedding day.
- A Taste of the Lash: Atar Gull is repeatedly whipped by slavers and overseers for rebelling or causing property damage.
- Author Tract: Slavery Is Bad, even if you're a "good" master.
- Bad Boss: After Grand-Sec tries to rape a slave, Brulart has him first tortured by putting him on a rail with weights on his legs, then throwing him overboard in a cage with the corpses of two dead slave women. In the book he repeatedly beats or strikes his crew when they disturb him during his opium dreams.
- The Big Guy: Atar Gull's size and strength are repeatedly emphasized as a selling point by slavers.
- Cannibal Clan: The Little Namaquas eat their prisoners, unlike the Great Namaquas who sell them to slavers.
- Cassandra Truth: When she was a child, Jenny Will often thought there was a snake in her room, so Atar Gull kills her by putting one there. She dies screaming for help, which is brushed off by her father.
- Even worse in the novel, where her fiancé leaves a dead snake in her room as a prank, with her parents in on it, even holding the door shut, all to teach her to confront her fears. They didn't know Atar Gull had arranged for the snake's mate to follow the trail of blood into her room and attack her.
- Cruel Mercy:
- Atar Gull keeps Tom Will alive for months in utter misery after his stroke, gloating about the ruin he caused to fall on Will.
- Rather than being killed for disobeying orders, Brulart casts Grand-Sec adrift in a floating cage with two corpses. This backfires when the sailor is picked up by an English frigate who hunt down Brulart.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: White characters being unimaginably inhumane towards blacks (while genuinely thinking they're doing good deeds) is displayed in full detail. The narration never loses an opportunity to underline the hypocrisy.
- Captain Benoit tells a sailor to make sure the slaves are well-fed and watered, since after all they're men just like whites.
- Tom Will the "humanist" slave owner is informed that one of his slave's sons has gone missing. His immediate response is anger that this was hidden from him due to how much a young healthy slave is worth.
- Dramatic Irony: Jenny's parents and fiancé gleefully tell Jenny not to be scared of the snake and that they deliberately put it there, thinking she's afraid of the dead one. She's actually panicking at the presence of the very real, very much alive snake that just appeared in her window.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Tom Will says he gets more out of his slaves by treating them well, that is, only giving half the lashes prescribed by the Black Code. Even the poisoners (escaped black slaves hiding in the mountains) deem him a good master and initially refuse to help Atar Gull.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: The British frigate pursuing Brulart stops to investigate the Catherine, believe there might be slaves to rescue aboard. Which is exactly what Brulart is counting on, leaving an explosive trap that goes off when the hatch is lifted.
- Offing the Offspring: Atar Gull slips poison into the well used for livestock and slaves to kill most of them, including his son with Narina.
- The Speechless: In the novel, the loss of his daughter, his wife, and his fortune in short order renders Tom Will unable to speak. However, Atar Gull still waits for him to be utterly helpless to reveal his true nature. In the comic, he's still able to speak until he suffers a stroke.
- Sympathetic Slave Owner: Plantation owner Tom Will is considered a "good master" (even by the escaped slaves on the island) because he only applies half the legal punishment to his slaves (and as a result his slaves last longer and are less inclined to revolt), and is complimented on his humanism by other plantation owners. But he's still a slave owner, responding to the news that one of his slaves' children has gone missing with anger because slave children sell better or getting rid of a slave too old to work by accusing him of theft and collecting the reward.
- To the Pain:
- Brulart explains to Benoit that he's going to free one of the slaves to find the way back to the Little Namaqua village (and kill him). There he will offer the chief a trade: Benoit and his men (the supposed murderers) in exchange for the Great Namaqua prisoners. This will allow him to bring a double load of slaves on two ships to Jamaica and eliminate the witnesses to his double-crossings.
- Atar Gull finally confessing in great detail that he was responsible for Tom Will's downfall, once Tom Will is unable to do anything about it.
- Villain Protagonist: Atar Gull racks up quite a few victims, not all of which are directly responsible for his fate.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Just about every white person falls over themselves to describe how good and attentive Atar Gull is.
- Would Hurt a Child: Cham's son is killed offscreen by the poisoners in the book and by Atar Gull in the comic.
- You Are a Credit to Your Race: Almost every white character admires Atar Gull for his strength, devotion and intelligence, deemed exceptional for a black man.
- You Killed My Father: Atar Gull's revenge against Tom Will kicks into high gear when he learns his father was a slave on the same plantation and hanged as a thief. In fact, as a slave too old to work anymore, Will had him accused of theft and hanged for the reward money (a government initiative so plantation owners wouldn't hide their slaves' crime to avoid losing a valuable slave).
Tropes from the novel:
- The Bad Guy Wins: After conspiring to ruin Tom Will and murder his daughter, keeping him alive and then gloating about it until Will's death, Atar Gull is rewarded for his faithful service with money from the French government.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Atar Gull tries to tear his forearm veins open with his teeth on the voyage to the Caribbean, but he's caught, beaten and patched up.
- Could Say It, But...: The narrator says that if it wasn't for a uncle in the clergy, he would spend quite a lot of time describing the naked slave women. Then does so anyway.
- Gold Digger: Brulart's apparent
Purity Sue ex-fiancée Marie is revealed to be one, poisoning him once she's used up his fortune before escaping with a young banker. - Impoverished Patrician: Brulart was once Comte Arthur de Valbelle, an Upper-Class Twit who fell in love with a girl and proposed a Seen-It-All Suicide Suicide Pact once his (father's) money ran out. She instead ran off with a young banker believing Brulart dead, and after he murdered her and her lover fell into opium and piracy.
- Killed Offscreen: Atar Gull murdering Jenny's fiancé Theodrick happens offscreen, and we only learn it happened when he boasts about it.
- Non-Indicative Name: "Grand-Sec" ("Tall-Skinny") is short and fat.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: The poisoners use the body of Cham's son for their rituals.
- Prefers the Illusion: Part of why Brulart is such an utter psychopath is because his opium addiction is so bad he believes his life of piracy is a lucid nightmare and his opium dreams are (much happier) reality.
- Psychotic Smirk: As Atar Gull and Tom Will are comforting the latter's wife over the death of their daughter Jenny, Atar Gull can't suppress a wicked grin. She sees it, instantly realizes what happened, but is only able to sputter Atar Gull and Jenny's name before she dies, and it's thought to be her saying how much the slave cared for their daughter.
- Risking the King: Commander Burnett goes to investigate the Catherine and is killed in the explosion.
Tropes from the comic:
- Adaptation Expansion: The mutiny that leaves Brulart cast adrift isn't seen, instead he faces a failed one on the Catherine just after leaving Africa (which quickly come under control when he points out he has the freshwater and they have the slaves.
- Adaptation Name Change: Karina (Atar Gull's love interest) is now named Narina.
- Adaptational Angst Upgrade:
- The comic book starts with Atar Gull claiming he will never cry and ends with him in tears after the death of Tom Will, not so much out of regret but the realization that he has nothing left to live for.
- Inverted with Jenny's death, where she doesn't hear her parents and fiancée gleefully teasing her about the snake (they know there's a snake, but think she's talking about a dead one) and holding her door shut.
- The comic has Tom's wife commit suicide offscreen, Tom and the doctor preferring to refer to it as Death by Despair.
- Black Bead Eyes: The default for most characters due to the artstyle. Atar Gull (and Brulart) usually has Blank White Eyes or Hidden Eyes, but has these when in his "model slave" persona.
- Compressed Adaptation:
- Brulart's backstory and opium addiction is mostly left out save for some references to having killed a woman he loved, hallucinating that she's strangling him with her hair as he's being hanged.
- The British naval commander gets almost no lines or characterization (in the novel, some of his crew think he's an Ensign Newbie).
- Facial Horror: Pleyston's face was ravaged on one side by the explosion, leaving him with one functional eye.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- In the novel, the British commander boards the Catherine and is killed in the explosion while Pleyston is still aboard the ship. In the comic, Pleyston boarded the ship, and while he didn't die his face was utterly ravaged by the explosion.
- Theodrick is murdered offscreen by Atar Gull, here his family buys the failing plantation from Will at a "scandalous" price.
