Serenity's African American Lit Blog

  I thought the Sambo doll and the coin bank played really important roles in the book and deeply affected the narrator.       When the narrator first finds the coin bank, it’s a little confusing because I wasn’t sure how he could stay in Mary’s house for so long without noticing it in his room. However, as the coin bank is a depiction of an enslaved man trying to get on a white man’s good side, I think it’s fitting that he finds the coin bank right before he starts working for the Brotherhood. Not that the narrator is trying to get on all the white men’s good sides, but that he’s going to work for them knowing absolutely nothing about their moral beliefs or goals. He’s enticed by the higher pay level, eventually at the cost of his own sanity. I also think that the coin bank represents how stereotypes follow you wherever you go, and no matter how hard you try to not fit into them, just by having black skin people will associate you with them. He tries his hardes...

  Throughout the course of the novel, there have been several characters that impact the narrator’s perspective and in some cases, course of action. Each of them acts as a mentorish figure in a very different way. The first example we get to know is Dr. Bledsoe who the narrator idolizes for his success.      The narrator looks up to his power and high reputation. However, the narrator does not really understand Bledsoe’s dog-eat-dog work mentality until he stabs the narrator in the back by kicking him out of the school without telling him. Up until that point, he thought that Bledsoe’s intentions were more focused on helping black people succeed rather than bringing only himself up, even at the expense of other black people. When the narrator moves all the way to New York and realizes what Bledsoe has done, he becomes deeply angry and carries that anger and loss of innocence with him for the rest of the book.       The veteran is someone that coul...