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263: Shotgun houses with wide spaces between them, a few dogs, chickens, children, and the women with nothing in their hands. They sat on porches, and walked in the road swaying their hips under cotton dresses, bare-legged, their unstraightened hair braided or pulled straight back into a ball. He wanted one of them bad.
- Signs of poverty — a shotgun house is cheap (small and unornamented enough that you can shoot a shotgun from front door to back) — but also an intermingling of people and natural elements (animals, cotton textiles).
- Unstraightened hair suggests lack of products, but also lack of influence by advertising and white culture. Calls back to Hagar's sighting of Milkman with a girl "whose silky copper-colored hair cascaded over the sleeve of his coat" (127).
- Emphasizes how Milkman's desires have changed.
- What is Milkman's desire tied to?
270: My name’s Macon; I’m already dead.
- Recurrence of the joke that he shares with Guitar, though this time he saves it for himself.
- Becomes more than a joke here: rather than cynically acknowledging his life's lack of meaning, it affirms his ability to survive. It propels him to move forward with purpose and becomes something he exceeds by really living.
260: He wondered why black people ever left the South.
- Shows how out of touch Milkman is with those in the South (does not recognize the challenges and traumas they also face), despite his high opinion of them at this moment.
- Continues the emphasis on Milkman as someone cut off from history, even when he is immersed in it; simply being in the place where his family is from is not going to be enough.
- Recalls Guitar's strong understanding of the differences between North and South and his knowledge of how harmful life can be for black people in each place.
271: Years ago he’d been a star pitcher in one of the black baseball leagues and the history of his career was nailed and pasted all over his shop.
- Shows that even Shalimar isn’t actually all that cut off: it's connected enough to have regional stars.
- Suggests that it is perhaps Milkman’s perspective on these places that makes it look so cut off.
265: What kind of place was this where a man couldn’t even ask for a woman?
- Milkman’s misogynistic perspective: that hospitality = the availability of women.
- Milkman's entitled perspective (what belongs to others should also belong to him), foreshadowing the reaction of the men of the town.
282: They turned to Milkman. “You want the heart?” they asked him. Quickly, before any thought could paralyze him, Milkman plunged both hands into the rib cage. “Don’t get the lungs, now. Get the heart.”
- Symbolic value of the heart as an honor to receive and an indication of the men's acceptance of Milkman.
- Proof that Milkman has changed: he’s taking action, rather than getting lost in his thoughts, agonizing about how he'll be perceived. Moreover, his actions acknowledge and affirm the generosity of others.
- Why avoid the lungs?
261: The floor was worn away with years of footsteps. Cans of goods on the shelf were sparse, but the sacks, trays, and cartons of perishables and semiperishables were plentiful.
- Emphasizes how far away Milkman is from a manufacturing center, while abundance of perishables and semiperishables indicate that he’s someplace rural: someplace where they produce and thrive on perishable food.
- Also emphasizes the qualities of a space that is lived in ("years of footsteps") and bares its history on its surface (like the children's song and the name of Mr. Solomon's shop) rather than hiding its past behind glossy facades.
263: There must be a lot of intermarriage in this place, he thought. All the women looked alike, except for some light-skinned red-headed men (like Mr. Solomon), the men looked very much like the women.
- Echoes the incest that haunts Milkman’s family
- A confirmation that Milkman is in his place, but also that this is a place that is not perfect: that the place where Milkman can grow up is just as complex as his childhood.
259: Milkman had never in his life seen a woman on the street without a purse slung over her shoulder, pressed under her arm, or dangling from her clenched fingers.
- Emphasizes the difference between the women of Shalimar and the women Milkman has dated (the rich crowd in his town). Foreshadows his own desire for them.
- What does a purse symbolize besides wealth?
285: He washed her hair. She sprinkled talcum powder on his feet. He straddled her behind and massaged her back. She put witch hazel on his swollen neck. He made up the bed. She gave him gumbo to eat.
- Both a scene in which Milkman does something for someone else and a scene of connection that recalls what Hagar wished she could have with him.
- Emphasizes Milkman's transformation into someone capable of mutually supportive relationship. Note the intense back-and forth that interlinks them: a closeness and reciprocity on the linguistic level that Milkman would have been incapable of before.
271: When Milkman was dressed in World War II army fatigues with a knit cap on his head, they opened some Falstaff beer and began to talk about guns.
- A moment of total transformation: Milkman has lost all the external attributes that he took with him from Michigan, and losing these attributes allows him to be more recognizable as someone the men can interact with. This perhaps suggest that he’s primed for an internal change now as well.
- World War II fatigues: brings back the Tuskegee Airmen from Chapter 2.
264: He’d never played like that as a child. As soon as he got up off his knees at the window sill, grieving because he could not fly, and went off to school, his velvet suit separated him from the other children.
- Emphasizes Milkman's separation from other children as a result of his wealth and longing.
- Emphasizes his lack of play, which gives insight into the lack of imagination he's carried through his life.
- Wealth kept him away from others, but what about his longing? Has his desire to fly been a bad thing? What is the alternative?
283: Milkman looked at the bobcat's head. The tongue lay in its mouth as harmless as a sandwich. Only the eyes held the menace of the night.
- Milkman notices the hazard in the bobcat’s eyes, even as he sees the mouth — theoretically the most dangerous part of the bobcat — as harmless.
- He’s able to now see things with complexity. Just as Macon can be loved and hated, Guitar both close and an enemy, the bobcat is both dangerous and harmless.
277: Under the moon, on the ground, alone, with not even the sound of baying dogs to remind him that he was with other people, his self—the cocoon that was "personality"—gave way.
- Emphasizes connection between reflection and transformation.
- Suggests that being around those who don't value his "personality" (who aren't invested in helping him maintain it) is what may allow him to leave it behind (it's no longer useful).
- Cocoon can be viewed as a protective, nurturing space or an isolating one. It is also necessary for the survival and transformation of a moth pupa into a flighted creature, suggesting that Milkman's journey up until now (including his ignorance) has been unavoidable.
268: The store was full of people by then and the women couldn't get through. The men tried to shush them, but they kept on screaming and provided enough lull for Mr. Solomon to interrupt the fight.
- Milkman is saved by women, again. Recalls Pilate's prediction that his ignorance (of social dynamics, his own positionally) will endanger him, and that women are likelier to save his life.
- Unclear if the women save Milkman's life intentionally, or if they are trying to protect Saul.
- Persistence and success of women's efforts over men's shushing points to their roles as mediators and as tempering forces against the violence of the moment (as well as the larger oppressive and destructive forces of the period).
276: At last he surrendered to his fatigue and made the mistake of sitting down instead of slowing down, for when he got up again, the rest had given his feet an opportunity to hurt him and the pain in his short leg was so great he began to limp and hobble.
- Stopping (stasis) is the mistake. The moment he stops, he regresses into his former sense of victimhood.
- Emphasizes that does not know yet how to manage being in the world in this way (he is making mistakes and not seeking help).
- His feet seem to have their own agency (even his own body is attacking him) and his short leg has returned, which emphasizes the psychological nature of his disability.
269: Under the hot sun, Milkman was frozen with anger. If he'd had a weapon, he would have slaughtered everybody in sight.
- Collapse of Milkman's experience into Guitar's (willingness to commit violence), but for the opposite reason. Anger is against black men and the result of being ostracized from their community.
- His reaction to being confronted with his privilege and difference is still to want to eliminate the problem, the discomfort. This time, rather than wanting to die himself and waiting for Hagar to kill him, he wants everyone else to disappear and imagines himself as the aggressor.
- Emphasizes his newfound tendency toward action as well as his continued inability to accept responsibility for his impact.
278: No, it was not language; it was what there was before language. Before things were written down.
- Milkman replaces his own easy interpretation (the dogs barking = language) with a more complex one (the barking pre-dates language).
- Emphasizes his growing ability to think beyond his own lifespan and take into account a longer history.
- By recognizing that things were not always as they are, he is learning to imagine and view his world differently.
264: Behind him the children were singing a kind of ring-around-the-rosy or Little Sally Walker game. Milkman turned to watch. About eight or nine boys and girls were standing in a circle. A boy in the middle, his arms outstretched, turned around like an airplane, while the others sang some meaningless rhyme...
- Ring-around-the-rosy has been connected to the Black Plague—referencing it here hints at the presence of hidden meanings in children's songs.
- Little Sally Walker is a children's rhyming game that features freestyle call-and-response dance—connects to individual creative expression and community.
- Airplane reference suggests that these children's games embody an aspect of flight (connected peer relationships and individuality) that Milkman missed in his childhood. Emphasizes metaphorical nature of flight.
- "Meaningless" emphasizes that Milkman is still on his journey to comprehension (he doesn't understand, but that doesn't mean there is nothing to be understood).
266: Now one of them spoke to the Negro with the Virginia license and the northern accent.
- Encapsulates the difference the men of Shalimar perceive in Milkman.
- Reference to license plate emphasizes his out-of-place wealth—the ability to buy a car in a state that isn't his own.
- Reference to his accent enhances the distinctions between North and South that we've been examining through Guitar—even if he changes his exterior, his very speech reveals him as an outsider.
- Reference to his race emphasizes the expectation that he would share their experience and identity and the reality that he doesn't ("he had the heart or the white men who came to pick them up...").