Trap - “Cora Unashamed”
Cora is plainly trapped in material scarceness and racialism: “You want to know how that could be? How a trap could close so tightly? Here is the outline: Cora was the oldest of a family of eight children -- the Jenkins niggers. The only Negroes in Melton, thank God! Where they came from originally -- that is, the old folks -- God knows. The kids were born there.” Cora exactly becomes heir to prejudice and dearth which profile the grade of her being. Manifestly, affiliation with a black household weakens the possibility of social kinesis, for the prevailing organization renders Cora’s household the ‘lowest citizens.’ The metaphoric trap stresses that classism, bigotry, and deficiency chain blacks to misery through generations.
Paralysis - “Cora Unashamed”
Langston Hughes illuminates: “Suddenly she (Cora) screamed. "They killed you! And for nothin'... They killed your child... They took you away from here in the Springtime of your life, and now you'se gone, gone, gone!" Folks were paralyzed in their seats.” The figurative paralysis personifies the mourners’ acute shockwave of emotions. Cora’s spot-on allegations are piercings that profoundly paralyze the listeners, since they did not anticipate perceiving such admonition.
Darkness -“ Passing”
Jack recalls, “You remember what a hard time I used to have in school trying to convince teachers I was really colored. Sometimes, even after they met you, my mother, they wouldn’t believe it. They just thought I had a mulatto mammy, I guess.” The motif of color emphasizes the colorism which is exploited when reading one’s race. The teachers’ skepticism indicates that they champion a colorist dogma; darker-skinned folks are not projected to birth categorically white-skinned offspring.
Whiteness - “Passing”
For Jack, whiteness epitomizes omnipotence: “I am going to marry white and live white, and if any of my kids are born dark I’ll swear they aren’t mine. I won’t get caught in the mire of color again. Not me. I’m free, Ma, Free.” Jack picks the white trait of the binary of color for it characterizes hegemony. Jacks’ avowals conjecture that he is unyielding in the preservation of white skin sovereignty. Psychologically, Jack is wholly Avoidant of his blackness for it would uncover him to the sore quandaries that are predictable for blacks’ experiences.
