The Plane, “A Party Down at the Square”
A lot goes down during party at the town’s square: a lynching, a fire, the electrocution of a woman and a near-crash of a plane. Some readers might be confused by the whole deal with the plane which suddenly if temporarily shifts the focus entirely away from the lynching. While the arrival and near-crashing of the plane does take the dramatics to another level, it does seem strangely out of place and perhaps even superfluous. Narratively, perhaps, but symbolically it becomes seamlessly integrated. The rest of the story could easily being taking place—with just a few minor adjustments—any time between late 1800’s and the early 20th century. The plane introduces a level of modernism that is supposed to seem jarringly out of place—just like the lynching should feel.
Train, “Boy on a Train”
Trains make several appearances in different stories in this collection, but none carry quite the deliberate symbolic meaning as in this particular tale. It is a story of a young boy on train looking at the world through windows that offer only limited perspective covering a great deal of territory. He is seeing a lot of the country passing by, but his perspective of that country is limited only to what is visible through the window from his perspective at a limited point in time. This symbolizes the narrative content of the story which is about the young black boy getting his first real look at the state of racial difference in America.
“The Black Ball”
The title of this story refers to a literal ball played with by the narrator’s son. Except that the boy’s ball is white. When an older white boy asks to play with it and immediately throws it through the one window that is worst possible window for it crash through, he learns the phrase “behind the black ball” but not the true meaning from his father. The white ball stupidly called black (according to the son) by the man behind the window becomes a symbol of the ignorance which leads to blackballing as a means of maintaining racial domination.
Toussaint L’Ouverture, “Mister Toussan”
The real-life historical liberator of the Haitian people comes to symbolizes unrealized potential and possibilities for two black schoolkids. This story takes place on a revolutionary day for the two boys. It is the first day in their lives that one of them has ever been taught in school that a black man in history is the heroic figure worthy of respect and admiration.
The Bingo Wheel, “King of the Bingo Game”
The bingo wheel is one symbol in one story that is part of a larger pattern of metaphorical imagery which situates gaming and gambling as a metaphor for life among black society. Blacks are allowed to play the game but it’s always a rigged contest. When the protagonist gets the chance to press a button that carries the very unlikely potential for earning a big payoff he refuses to press the button and merely keeps the wheel spinning and the game going because even if he can’t win that way, he won’t lose. Ultimately, however, he does win and at the very moment, inevitably, he loses in a symbolic display of the extent to which the game is always rigged.
