Summary: Chapter 20
The narrator visits a bar, one of his old Harlem haunts.
He recognizes two men who have attended some of his speeches and addresses
them as “brother.” They react with hostility. He learns that many
of the jobs that the Brotherhood procured for Harlem residents have
disappeared. These men themselves have left the organization. Some
men accuse the narrator of getting “white fever” when he moved to
lecture downtown. He returns to his old office to look for Brother
Tarp but fails to find anyone in the building. He discovers that
Harlem membership in the Brotherhood has declined due to a change
in the Brotherhood’s emphasis from local issues to national and
international concerns.
The narrator waits to be called to the strategy
meeting that Brother Jack mentioned, but the call never comes. He
hurries to headquarters anyway and finds the meeting already in
progress. The narrator realizes that the other members intended
to exclude him all along. Furious, he leaves the building and goes
to shop for shoes. He spots Tod Clifton peddling “Sambo” dolls in
the street. (The American stereotype of “Sambo” dates back to the
time of slavery, denoting a docile but irresponsible, loyal but
lazy slave.) Clifton sings out a jingle while the dolls dance in
a loose-limbed motion. The narrator feels betrayed. Clifton sees
some white police officers coming toward him and sweeps up his Sambo dolls,
hastening around the corner. Apparently Clifton knows that he is
not allowed to sell his dolls on the street. Clifton bids the audience
that had gathered to watch his display to follow him. The narrator
spots one of the dolls left behind and begins to crush it with his
foot. Seeing one of the policemen nearby, however, he picks up the
doll and puts it in his briefcase. He begins walking away, but as
he comes around another corner he sees a huge crowd gathered. Clifton
stands in the midst of it, flanked by policemen. The narrator then
sees Clifton strike one of the officers, and the officer draws his
gun and shoots Clifton dead.
Summary: Chapter 21
The narrator returns to Harlem in a stunned daze, haunted
by the memory of Clifton’s death and of the black doll. Once he
reaches his office, he tries to make the doll dance. He finally
realizes that Clifton was manipulating it with a black string attached
to its back. He stares at the doll until someone knocks at his door.
A group of weeping young Brotherhood members asks him if Clifton
is dead. The narrator confirms the story. He then tries to call
the headquarters for instructions but receives no answer. He rallies
the members in his building to stage a funeral march for Clifton
and sends some women to claim the body from the morgue. He notifies
the community churches of the funeral and publicizes Clifton’s untimely,
unnecessary death. When the march takes place two days later, the
community is stirred and angry. Hundreds of former members of the Brotherhood
show up to march. The narrator delivers a sobering speech to the
audience. Once the speech is over, the narrator senses a heavy tension
in the crowd. He hopes that members of the Brotherhood will harness
that tension and recover their influence in the Harlem community.
Analysis: Chapters 20–21
These chapters focus sharply on the ideas of
belonging and betrayal. While the narrator believes that he serves
the interest of black Americans by joining with the Brotherhood,
the former members of the Harlem branch shun him when he attempts
to strike up a friendly conversation. They see his continued membership
in the Brotherhood as a betrayal of the black community. On the
other hand, the narrator himself feels betrayed in these chapters,
first when he discovers Clifton selling the Sambo dolls and later
when he learns that the Brotherhood has deliberately excluded him
from their strategy meeting.
The men that the narrator encounters in the bar have left
the Brotherhood in anger at the organization’s gradual abandonment
of the Harlem community. They thus distance themselves from the group’s
treachery, but, in the process, they lose their political voice. Clifton,
too, has left the Brotherhood, again perhaps on principle; unlike
these men, however, he does not fall silent but rather commits a
worse treachery against his community. Not only do his puppets perpetuate
stereotypes of blacks, but he also conforms to the represented stereotype
by trying to please his audience in a servile way.
Nevertheless, Clifton’s peddling of the dolls
exhibits a more complex attitude toward race relations than a simple
acceptance of stereotypes: he seems to offer a veiled commentary
on the racial stereotype of the grinning, “yes”-saying “good slave”
as he urges his listeners to stretch the doll by the neck and not
worry about breaking it. Clifton intends to mock those who fulfill
the stereotypical slave-master relationship with his assertion that
the “good slave” lives for the sunshine of the white spectator’s
smile. On the other hand, he seems to sneer at those who think that
they can escape the effects of this degrading stereotype. Clifton
himself suffers the penalty for not confining himself to the “good slave”
role. Though he defies white authority by rising up against the
police officer, his deviation from his “proper” place leads immediately
to his death. In the end, Clifton’s selling of the dolls, whether
undertaken as a last resort to fit into society or as a veiled act
of defiance, proves much more dangerous than the other former Brotherhood
members’ retreat into silence.
