coping with the south

            He had begun interacting with the White world after years of standing up for himself, his beliefs, and fighting authority. After his years of doing this with whites in the back of his mind, he was finally cast out into the real world without ever having actually experienced the harsh realities or violence first hand. It was then that he went into shock and pulled back into himself unable to interact at all. His way of life that he had been raised on had been shattered. He could no longer react, talk, and act the way he normally would without serious repercussions on his life. This manifests itself in nearly all of his jobs. It begins the most obviously with the factory optician’s job where he learns that blacks have a place and boundaries that he never learned. His constant push up breaches these boundaries and goes beyond the lowly levels that whites want blacks to stay in. The next most obvious reaction is that as a hotel bellman. He wants to fight and stand up to the night guard who gropes a girl, but gets a hold of himself just before pushing the guard into shooting him. The final point when he begins to give up and force himself to take risks in this dark world in order to escape is when he takes part of the movie theatre operation. This coupled with the stealing is his last ditch effort to cope and escape a world he didn’t belong in.