“I was never, never, under any conditions, to fight white folks again. And they were absolutely right in clouting me with the broken milk bottle."
The introductory essay is the direct way through which the writer addresses the reader in a direct manner. The narrator lived through the Jim Crow laws and these affected him in unimaginable ways. Some of the social injustices which he had to endure are mentioned in the essay, the narrator presenting these events from his personal point of view. The idea stressed in the essay is the way in which the white population was out of bounds for the black community. No matter what the white population was doing to the black community, they did not had the possibility of standing up for themselves and fighting for their own life. Instead, as the narrator points out, they had to deal with having bottles being broken on their heads while pretending everything was fine and normal.
“Yet he knew that they would not and could not help him, even as he in times past had not helped the other black men being taken by the white folks to their death.”
The quote appears at the end of the novella when Mann knows his death is imminent. By that point, it was discovered Mann was the man who killed the white man from whom he stole the boat. Mann is pointed out as being the killed after he had saved the white man’s family. As Mann is taken away, he watches the rest of the black men and women around him and wonders why no one tried to help him. Mann quickly realizes the reason why no one dared to help him and that was because by helping them, they were also putting their lives in danger. This problem alienated black individuals from one another since none dared to help their fellow brothers and sisters out of fear they will have to suffer the same fate as them.
"Silas had killed as many as he could and had stayed on to burn, had stayed without a murmur"
After killing the white man with whom his wife slept with, Silas knew that there was no hope for him. Silas was going to be killed by other white men trying to avenge the death of their fellow white person and the knowledge of his imminent death made Silas realize there was never any hope for him either. Before this incident, Silas hoped to buy enough land to produce crops to sustain himself and his family. As time went by, he realized this was only a dream he could not achieve, since the society in which he lived was never going to allow him to be truly independent. This knowledge made Silas feel as if he had no reason to live and as a result made him act impulsively and rash. This eventually culminated in his brutal death and in the destruction of his dreams.
