Jesus

Character Analysis

Nancy's husband only appears once in the story, but he nonetheless plays a major role in everything that goes down.

He seems like a dangerous dude. We're told he has "a razor scar on his black face" (1.15), quite possibly the result of fighting. He wears a "razor on that string down his back, inside his shirt" (1.65), ready to take it out in case he needs it to fight someone.

On the other hand, we get some contradictory evidence about him, too. Nancy says "Jesus always been good to me" and "Whenever he had two dollars, one of them was mine" (1.57). Despite the rare evidence in his favor, Nancy's fear of him infects the reader—to Nancy, and to us, he's more of a nightmare figure than Freddy Krueger.

As for Jesus' one appearance, here's what happens. Nancy is cooking for the white family, and Jesus, for some reason, is hanging out there too. He says that Nancy has a watermelon under her dress (i.e., she's pregnant). When she tells him the unborn child isn't his, he says he "can cut down the vine it did come off of" (1.18). So yeah, he says he's going to lop off the father's penis. He's a threatening dude.

After the threat, he points out the difference between the white men's access to Nancy, a prostitute, and his. "Kitchen" is a euphemism for a woman in the following quote from Jesus:

"I can't hang around white man's kitchen [...] But white man can hang around mine. White man can come in my house, but I can't stop him. When white man want to come in my house, I ain't got no house." (1.20)

In other words, Jesus is harboring some understandable resentment. That, along with the threat, the razor, and the scar, make him seem fearsome.

But for the rest of the story, he doesn't show up. We're told via the white family's father that a black person told Nancy that Jesus was in town, but we're told he's in Memphis or St. Louis. Nobody is sure except, toward the end of the story, Nancy, who believes Jesus is lying in wait near her, ready to spring and kill her.

It's the threat of Jesus that winds up the suspense of this story and makes the story move. And the threat is all the more frightening given that we're not quite sure if Jesus is around or not.

Did we mention his name? It's pretty ironic, right? He couldn't be further from the peaceful Biblical Jesus. Nancy fears he comes not for peace, but with a sword (or, well, a razor, but close enough). Somehow his name makes him all the more frightening, as if he's filled with dangerous magic power.