The Title
The novel’s title is metaphorical. The full expression occurs only twice over the course of the book. First as epigram with anonymous attribution to a “Negro folk saying.” Then later as a piece of dialogue in a reply from Braxton to a criticism leveled against getting involved “a broad like that.”
“Why not? She’s just as a good as the rest, and you know what they say, `the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice.’”
The berry referenced in the title thus becomes a metaphor for women—and by extension anyone of either sex—born with darker-colored skin.
Nature's Palette
A glimpse is provided into the psychology of the novel’s protagonist, Emma Lou, right on the first page when the narrator enters her mind to delineate her feelings toward the various hues available to the pigment of the Negro in figurative imagery allowing her to bemoan her place along that spectrum. Emma Lou simply cannot
“comprehend the cruelty of the natal attenders who had allowed her to be dipped, as it were, in indigo ink when there were so many more pleasing colors on nature’s palette.”
God
Truman, one of the book’s representatives of the Harlem Renaissance intelligentsia, doles out observations in highly figurative language, including an explanation of God as the supreme being relates to the cultural understanding of the Negro:
“the God we, or rather most negroes worship is a patriarchal white man, seated on a white throne, in a spotless white Heaven, radiating with white streets and white appareled angels eating white honey and drinking white milk.”
If by chance you missed the essential verbal ingredient in this figurative concoction, notice that the word “white” accounts for no less than seven of the paragraph’s 38 words. Truman, it may be accurately assessed, is a man who in a later time would be marginalized not as part of the intelligentsia, but as a militant.
Blue Veins
“Blue veins” is a term the novel engages to lend metaphorical depth to a literal reality. The name derives from those of mixed racial heritage whose pigment had over the successive generations become light enough that a purplish blood could be seen coursing through the veins just beneath their fairer skin. From this literal identification the term expands to take on greater symbolic meaning as the “blue veins” enjoy greater access to the benefits extended by those with white skin.
The Piano Player
Thurman powerfully uses the forces of metaphor and simile to create vivid imagery that puts the reader right into the middle of the action of the narrative. Even more to the point, the reader is put into the mind of Emma Lou as she witnesses each new and exciting wonder so that the figurative language does not just create the scene, but further delineates the character with whom they are encouraged to identify:
“the piano player…was acting like a maniac…grimacing like a witch doctor, and letting his hands dawdle…with an agonizing indolence, when compared to the extreme exertion to which he put the rest of his body.”
