How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #25
Brother, This is advice from a friend who has been watching you closely. Do not go too fast. Keep working for the people but remember that you are one of us and do not forget if you get too big they will cut you down. You are from the South and you know that this is a white man's world. So take a friendly advice and go easy so that you can keep on helping the colored people. They do not want you to go too fast and will cut you down if you do. Be smart…(18.2 – 18.3)
This anonymous message generates new significance when we learn at the very end of the novel that it's from Brother Jack who is, by the way, white. Just another example of the ways that race is used as a manipulative tool in this novel.
Quote #26
I picked up the link and held it toward him, the metal oily and strangely skinlike now with the slanting sun entering the window. "Would you care to examine it, Brother? One of our members wore it nineteen years ago on the chain gang."
"Hell, no!" He recoiled. "I mean, no, thank you. In fact, Brother, I don't think we ought to have such things around!"
"You think so," I said. "And just why?"
"Because I don't think we ought to dramatize our differences." (18.84 – 18.87)
Here, the narrator encounters "forced sameness." At the same time, contrast this with Emma's comment upon meeting the narrator – that he should be "blacker."
Quote #27
Shake him, shake him, you cannot break him For he's Sambo, the dancing, Sambo, the prancing, Sambo, the entrancing, Sambo Boogie Woogie paper doll. And all for twenty-five cents, the quarter part of a dollar… Ladies and gentlemen, he'll bring you joy, step up and meet him, Sambo the – (20.71-5)
There is a lot to unpack in this brief ditty. First, it suggests resilience on the part of black people, who, "shake them" as you might, you cannot break. Second, it suggests a role of black people as entertainers – but as entertainers whose strings you can pull and control. Third, this can also be viewed as not having anything to do with race and everything to do with the narrator as Sambo, being cruelly played by others. Lastly, the ditty suggests that black people can be bought.