Mysticism
The stories in this collection are among the mystical that most people may ever read. Mysticism is often defined as a transcendent spiritual communication with a divine truth manifested through equally and appropriately imagistic and metaphorical language. The language of the stories in this collection permeate with densely constructed imagery, symbolism and metaphor, conversational dialect and other literary devices and tools that serve to force the reader to pay closer attention than usual and engage a higher level of critical thought in order to understand exactly what the stories are really about. A fusion is created through allusions to both Judeo-Christian religion and African pagan ritualism in an attempt to establish a divine connection in the duality of the African American experience.
North and South
To simply assert that racism is a theme which unifies the stories in the collection would be too simplistic to even bother arguing. What is the real focus of racism in the stories is geography. The Mason-Dixon lines becomes like a boundary divides and separates fear and anxiety. The stories which are set in the rural south “The Crossing” situate black society living in fear of whites. On the other hand, stories set in the north like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” usually reveal an empowerment of black society and a coincident diminution of white power over them.
The Natural Versus the Unnatural
The stories set in the south are also about a more tangible connection between characters and the natural world. Nature is in turn connected with Africa for collection’s black characters and the implication is a unity which has been lost in the relationship between white society and nature. Throughout, in stories set either north or south, white society is presented as disconnected from nature and having become too dependent upon the unnatural aspects of the world they use to control and oppress blacks. This in turn becomes a symbolic implication: racism is an unnatural force exploited to control black society in America.
