Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses rape and racism. The guide quotes and obscures the author’s use of the n-word, which Himes uses to highlight and critique racism in the USA.

Christianity is a motif in the novel through which Himes draws attention to the way white people weaponize religion for racist purposes. For example, Madge tells Bob: “The preacher said n****** were full of sin. That’s what makes you black” (138). In an earlier passage, Madge’s sister-in-law, Elsie, tells Bob that “he [God] made us white ‘cause he wanted us the same color as Him. ‘I will make thee in My Image,’ He said, and that’s what He done” (124). In the Christian religion, God is perceived as the embodiment of goodness; given that Elsie believes that white people are made in the image of God and Black people are not, Elsie believes that white people have been endowed with some kind of divine goodness that Black people were not given.

This echoes historical constructs that have figured Blackness as evil—when slavery was legal in the United States, being Black was often referred to as the “Mark of Cain.” This references an event in the Book of Genesis in the Bible during which, after Cain murders his brother Abel in a fit of jealousy, God “marks” him and sends him into exile.