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Theodora Carlisle's article “Reading The Scars” concerns itself with the act of reading: how it's a central thematic element and how it responds to Sophocles' original. She acknowledges that Darker Face of the Earth is an artistic rendering of Oedipus Tyrannus, while also maintaining that Rita Dove's play can stand on its own. According to Carlisle, this is partly due to the undercurrents of difference within the play that speak to the black experience. She cites the Scylla as a prime example of Dove's ability to take the broad details of the original play and reinterpret them to suit her own thematic concerns.

Prologue

The play opens on the Jennings plantation, where several slaves wait below the bedroom window of their mistress Amalia, who is giving birth. Upstairs, the child is born – he is black and clearly not the son of Amalia’s husband Louis. The doctor convinces Amelia and Lewis to send the child away to a life as another man’s slave, telling their own slaves that he died during the birthing process. The baby is spirited away in Amalia's knitting basket, into which Louis has placed a pair of spurs in hopes of killing the child.

Act 1 20 Years later

As several slaves (Scipio, Phebe) discuss their mistress’ increased cruelty since losing her child, another slave named Scylla falls into a trance. She relates a prophecy that will purportedly affect four people: black woman, black man, white woman, white man. She points to Hector – a slave who went mad and now lives in the swamp – as a black man possibly affected by the curse. Amalia has purchased a new slave named Augustus Newcastle, notorious for being educated and escaping many times. Upon arrival, he is introduced to and speaks with several slaves. When the conversation turns to his travels Scylla accuses him of stirring up trouble. In the ensuing argument Scylla foreshadows the Oedipal curse that hangs over his head. In the swamp near the plantation, a group of conspirators enlist Augustus to assist them in whose stated goal is to kill their oppressors: slave masters and those who support the institution of slavery. Soon after, in the cotton fields, Augustus tells his fellow slave of the Haitian Revolution – a successful slave revolt heralded by its motto: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite. Their mistress Amalia overhears and orders Augustus to the big house at sunset. Once there, Amalia and Augustus engage in a conversation that challenges and attracts them to one another, ending in a kiss.