1. They have a saying for people who fall down as I do: If a person
is hit hard enough, even if she stands, she falls.
Meridian speaks these words in the novel’s opening chapter, “The Last
Return.” She is referring to her illness, which causes her to collapse and
lapse into unconsciousness. Her words are prophetic, as they also reference
the various physical beatings and torments she experiences while protesting
on behalf of the civil rights movement. Both her condition and the violence
meted out by policemen and others unsympathetic to the cause serve as
powerful threats that unsettle Meridian, qualifying her identity and
stability. Meridian’s words probe the nature of strength and resistance and
the challenges, both internal and social, with which she is saddled. No
matter how strong she is in the face of adversity, hatred and violence leach
away her dignity, resolve, and her belief in herself. Meridian learns that,
like racism, her “peculiar madness” is a legacy, an affliction that affected
her great-grandmother and her father as well. Meridian’s life is
overburdened with this overwhelming genetic inheritance, just as her daily
life is affected by segregation, which dehumanize those who are subjected to
it. No matter how strong her resolve, Meridian’s body and psyche bear the
scars of the physical and emotional assaults that she must constantly
repel.
