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Sybil is a white woman married to a man named George, who holds a leadership position in the Brotherhood. Because her husband is always busy, Sybil feels lonely and generally dissatisfied. The narrator sets out to have an affair with her, hoping to take advantage of her loneliness to get information about what the Brotherhood is up to. However, Sybil has no interest in politics or the Brotherhood’s operations. Instead, she drinks heavily and entertains racist fantasies that overly sexualize Black men. During the narrator’s encounter with Sybil, she asks him to participate in her fantasy of getting raped by a “savage” Black man. Sybil has an ambiguous presence in the novel. On the one hand, as a white person who views the narrator through the lens of a harmful sexual stereotype, Sybil represents yet another example of racism. On the other hand, as a woman who has also been objectified and denied opportunities for self-determination, she has some experiences in common with the narrator. In the end, though, Sybil’s loneliness and disenfranchisement do not enable her to connect with the narrator. Instead, she attempts to gain an advantage by asserting her own limited power over him.
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