Summary
The section “Free at Last” begins on a day in April 1968 at the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. Meridian joins a swelling crowd of African Americans who wait outside the church during the services. Afterwards, as the crowd joins the funeral procession, Meridian feels ashamed that people are acting boisterous and engaging in loud conversation. She overhears a black man saying that black people don’t carry on over death the way white people do.
The next section, “Questions,” opens with a conversation between Truman and Meridian about the necessity of killing for a revolution. Meridian is convinced that anyone who fights for justice needs to know in advance whether they would kill, in order to understand how much they’re willing to give up; Truman thinks that agonizing over such questions is pointless. Truman argues that revolution was a fad of the sixties that has essentially blown over, but Meridian counters that the question of how to obtain equality is still burning in people’s minds.
Behind the house where Meridian lives in Chicokema, a large ditch called the “pool” frequently floods with excess water from the nearby reservoir. Occasionally the rising water knocks down a small child, drowning them. To protest the fact that the white city officials do nothing to fill up the pool, Meridian carries the bloated body of a drowned child into a town meeting.
“Camara” begins in the summer of ‘68, when Meridian attends a service at a church with a black congregation. She is surprised that the preacher speaks like Martin Luther King, Jr., and that the service is focused on how to fight injustice rather than on religious themes. Meridian wonders if the black church has become the last bastion of resistance in the fight for equal rights. She is deeply touched when a large, red-eyed man, whose son was killed after he became involved in the civil rights movement, stands before the congregation. Walking back from the church, she makes a silent promise to the bereaved man that she would kill for the revolution before allowing another murder like his son’s to happen.
In the next two sections, Truman and Meridian travel the Southern countryside, trying to register African Americans to vote. In “Travels,” the two attempt to convince the husband of a sick woman to register. They speak with his wife and help him roll old newspapers, which he will sell as kindling to people in the town. The man insists that he doesn’t want to get involved, and Truman and Meridian bring him two bags of food anyway. Months later, however, he brings Truman and Meridian skinned rabbits and rolled newspapers, and he agrees to register.
In “Treasure,” Truman and Meridian are walking down a nearly deserted country lane when they find an overweight, elderly black woman burning a field. They walk to her back to her house, where they discover that the woman, Miss Margaret Treasure, has been living with her younger sister for many years, rarely seeing other people. She fell in love with a man who came to paint the house and believes that she is pregnant, although she is seventy years old. When trying to drag a bed off the porch, Miss Treasure hurts her leg, and Truman and Meridian take her to the hospital. In her gratitude, Miss Treasure readily agrees to register to vote.
In “Pilgrimage,” Truman and Meridian visit a thirteen-year-old girl in jail, imprisoned for strangling her infant child. Drained by the emotionally intense visit, Truman and Meridian return to Meridian’s house. Meridian sits, watching workmen fill in the pool—a small victory for neighborhood voters—and writing poems.
The next section, “Atonement,” recounts a conversation between Truman and Lynne. Truman tells Lynne that although he loves her, he no longer desires her. He asks if the two can be friends. Lynne replies that they can start over again if they go back South, but Truman doesn’t see the point.
The narrative returns to Truman and Meridian in Chicokema. They talk about their feelings for each other; Meridian insists that by not loving Truman, she had set him free. She tells Truman about a woman she knows who left her husband because he was infatuated with his dog, but had to return to him because she couldn’t provide for their five children alone. The novel ends with Meridian walking away from the house, as Truman reads the poems she has taped to her walls.
Analysis
Meridian’s experience at Martin Luther King, Jr.’s funeral explores different approaches to death and grief. Although Meridian is ashamed and repulsed by what she perceives to be an air of liberation in the crowd, other funeral-goers think it’s a good thing to not carry on over death. This section examines the line between celebrating a life and grieving its loss, a balance made more complicated by the fact that King was such a motivational leader for the black community, and that the civil rights movement stalled without his remarkable presence.
The question of death is never far from Meridian’s mind, as she obsessively ruminates on whether killing is necessary for a revolution to be effective. Meridian thinks of her doubt in her ability to kill as a weakness; she sees her place in the revolution as inspiring those who are dedicated enough to kill others. Her perspective changes, however, after seeing the bereaved man in the black church, whose son was murdered. After all of her challenging experiences, it is this man’s red-eyed grief that makes her charged enough to silently promise murder, although, as her life goes on, her commitment to this promise varies along with her changing attitude.
Truman, in contrast, doesn’t have an opinion on the matter: he thinks that such obsessive thinking is pointless, which is reflective of his ultimate lack of interest in the movement outside of Meridian. Throughout the novel, Truman has held a complicated and almost tortured opinion on race issues, feeling guilty for loving a white woman while also laying his life and limb on the line for the movement in Atlanta. His final connection to civil rights seems to be strongest through Meridian, who, for Truman, is a symbol of black womanhood and strength—although Meridian herself resists this labeling when Truman tries to apply it to her.
The end of the novel returns, to some extent, to the beginning: when Meridian was a student at Saxon and first getting involved in the movement there, she and Lynne walked from house to house trying to get men and women to register to vote. The novel ends with Truman and Meridian engaging, often successfully but sometimes not, in the very same activist actions. Their travels show them the tragedies and triumphs of black life in the face of many hardships, but ultimately affirm their humanity and their hope for the eventual possibility of change.
The end of the novel shows Meridian walking away from the house, an ambiguous action because the reader is left unsure of where exactly Meridian is going. The fact that she left her cap at the house may indicate that she is stronger, or that she is about to die from her illness. Walking away alone, however, continues to show Meridian’s distinct individuality and the fact that she can proudly bear her lonely struggle for equality. Truman is left in Meridian’s shadow, picking through the poems that she wrote and trying, in the end, to understand her.
