1. Theme

The idea of racism is a theme in the story, for the implication of the husband’s racism is what causes the couple to quarrel. The wife dislikes her husband’s beliefs that African Americans are different from whites. He maintains that it is not that he is prejudiced against African Americans, but that they come from a different culture and they even have their own language. The husband’s negative response to Ann’s question of whether he would marry her were she African American indicates the pervasive and destructive nature of his racism.

2. Structure

1) Part 1 (Para. 1): The husband and wife maintain a harmonious relationship with each other. .

2) Part 2 (Para. 2-51): The husband is questioned by his wife about his view on a white person’s marrying a black person.

3) Part 3 (Para. 52): He has a strange feeling of uneasiness in the dark.

Question:

1) Is the quarrel between the husband and wife an ordinary quarrel? What does the talk touch upon? Who do you think is responsible for the quarrel?

2) Question: Is the husband a considerate and honest man? What kind of man is he?

3) Question: Does the man oppose marriage between a black and a white? What are his arguments?

4) Question: What kind of woman is the wife? Is she too critical? What does she think the marriage between blacks and whites?

5) Question: Why does the woman corner her husband by keeping asking him whether he would marry her if she were black?

6) Question: Do you think the husband knows his wife very well?

3. Discussion

1) When the husband got the look where the wife pinched her brows together and bit her lip, he knew he should keep his mouth shut. But he never did. Instead, it made him talk more. What can you infer from the above description?

2) “Listen, I went to school with blacks, and I’ve worked with blacks and we’ve got along just fine. I don’t need you coming along now and implying that I’m a racist.” What can we conclude about the husband?

3) When he said “They even have their own language”, what did the husband imply?

4) When the wife said “but if they love each other?” the husband thought “Oh, boy”. What was he actually thinking?

5) He was angry with her for resorting to the trick of repeating his words so that they sounded hypocritical. Do his words sound hypocritical or is he hypocritical?

Writing Devices

1. Contrast

2. Innuendo

He thought of years they had spent together, and how close they are, and how well they knew each other… (Para. 43)

The room was silent. His heart pounded the way it had on their first night together, the way it still did when he woke at a noise in the darkness and waited to hear it again—the sound of someone moving through the house, a stranger. (Para. 52)

 Sentence Paraphrase

1. All the things considered, he thought it was a bad idea. (Para. 2)

2. Sometimes his wife got this look where she pinched her brows together and bit her lower lip. (Para. 4)

3. He squeezed to see how deep the wound was. (Para. 18)

4. “Yes, different,” he snapped, angry with her resorting to this trick of repeating his words so that they sounded hypocritical. (Para. 16)

5. While he was at it, he decided, he might as well mop the floor. (Para. 42)

6. He thought the years they had spent together, and how close they were, and how well they knew each other, and his throat tightened so that he could hardly breathe. (Para. 43)