1. Consider the racial connotations of Liberty Pains. Think about the company name, trademark, slogans, government contracts, and Optic White. What do you think the company symbolizes?
The company symbolizes patriotism. It is implied that Liberty Paints has an idea of a "pure" color, meaning that certain colors are acceptable while others are not.
2. Why has the company been hiring Blacks?
So they won't have to pay union wages.
3. Think about how Optic White is manufactured? What do the 10 drops of "dead black liquid" symbolize?
It is manufactured in a paint plant with black laborers. It symbolizes the way black labor is used to make white products.
4. Now that Lucius Brockway works deep in the basement of the factory, hidden from view. Is this symbolic? How is Brockway like Bledsoe? How is he different?
It is symbolic for the way that the economic ladder is set up with the blacks at the bottom. They both want to protect their position. Brockway isn't trying to control the system. He is a humble man happy with his current standing and job.
5. How is Brockway himself like 10 drops?
He is an important part of the creation of the paint. He works at the base, which is essential to the entire process. Brockway is like the paint because his labor goes unacknowledged just like the black drops disappear in the white paint, but are still essential to it.
6. After the explosion on p. 230, the narrator is thrust "into a wet blast of black emptiness that is somehow a bath of whiteness." How does this immersion of a Black man into a world of whiteness continue the expressionism of the chapter?
It emphasizes the drastic difference between the life life of a Black man and a White man. The world belongs to the White man, which is why the narrator was immersed in a "world of whiteness."
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