Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary
devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Small Displays of Power
Gaines shows how racism pervades every nook and cranny
of society, grinding down black people in everyday interactions.
Black people are made to feel their inferiority when they are made
to wait at a white person’s leisure, forced to enter through the
back door of a white person’s house, or treated shabbily by a white
salesperson. When Grant must enter Pichot’s house through the back
door, it is a symbolic reminder of the days of slavery, when slaves
could never approach the front door. When angry, the black Reverend
Ambrose wields his power over Grant by calling him “boy,” using
one of the pejorative terms usually employed by racist whites when
referring to grown black men. Gaines suggests that such small moments
of subjugation are impossible to shake off because of their cumulative oppressive
effect.
Christian Imagery
Jefferson becomes a Christ figure as the novel progresses.
Unjustly tried and convicted, the simple-minded Jefferson dies a
martyr. The mayor attempts to dispel some of the associations of
Jefferson with Christ by setting the execution date for two weeks
after Easter, but his awareness of the imagery simply reinforces
its power. In trying to move Jefferson to die with dignity, the
cynical Grant begins to think of him as a Christ figure—repenting
in front of Jefferson and saying that he feels lost—but should Jefferson
show him the way, he will find salvation, if not as a Christian
then as a caring and active member of the community. Grant tells
Vivian that only Jefferson can break the cycle of failed black men;
at the end of the novel, Grant begs Jefferson’s forgiveness as if
speaking to a savior.
