How we cite our quotes: (Section.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"When you going to pay me, white man? When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since you paid me a cent—" Mr. Stovall knocked her down, but she kept on saying, "When you going to pay me, white man? It's been three times now since—" until Mr. Stovall kicked her in the mouth with his heel and the marshal caught Mr. Stovall back, and Nancy lying in the street, laughing. She turned her head and spat out some blood and teeth and said, "It's been three times now since he paid me a cent." (1.12)
This passage shows who gets the short end of the stick in Jefferson. Nancy, a prostitute, can't collect payment from one her customers, but he has near-total license from society to kick out her teeth when she asks for her money. Then she goes to jail and gets beaten some more. In short, a black woman is blamed for problems in which she's only one of the players. Ugh.
Quote #2
"I ain't nothing but a n*****, Nancy said. "It ain't none of my fault." (1.29)
Nancy, identifying here with a racial slur, places the blame for her pregnancy on her color rather than on herself. It's as if she feels she's been doomed from birth, that her downfall is inevitably coming.
Quote #3
"Was it Jesus?" Caddy said. "Did he try to come into the kitchen?"
"Jesus," Nancy said. Like this: Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesus, until the sound went out, like a match or a candle does.
"It's the other Jesus she means," I said. (2.6-8)
Nancy calls for rescue from Jesus, not her husband but the Christian one. She may feel trapped or even guilty due to her skin color, and that only a religious power can save her from that fate.
Quote #4
"I ain't a n*****," Jason said. "Are you a n*****, Nancy?" "I hellborn, child," Nancy said. "I wont be nothing soon. I going back where I come from soon." (2.27-28)
Nancy, in this passage, believes she's predestined from birth to suffer: she comes from hell, and the death she imagines Jesus will bring to her will take her back there. Perhaps she has internalized a sense of guilt due to the oppression of black people in Jefferson. Perhaps, too, she's losing her mind somewhat, as illustrated later when she leaves her hands on the hot globe or in the fire.
Quote #5
"Yet we pay taxes," mother said. "I must sit here alone in this big house while you take a Negro woman home." (3.15)
The mother sees no reason to blame herself for Nancy's plight. She seems to think that because her family pays taxes, she should be exempt from having to suffer at all, and that Nancy should have to endure hardship all alone.
Quote #6
Nancy was holding the coffee cup in her hands again, her elbows on her knees and her hands holding the cup between her knees. She was looking into the cup. "What have you done that made Jesus mad?" Caddy said. Nancy let the cup go. It didn't break on the floor, but the coffee spilled out, and Nancy sat there with her hands still making the shape of the cup. She began to make the sound again, not loud. Not singing and not unsinging. We watched her. (3.18)
Uh oh, there goes Caddy with her on-point questions. She asks Nancy what she did that angered her husband. The answer, of course, is that one of her white customers impregnated her. But Nancy feels so guilty about this that she can't answer; she can only drop the cup and wail.
Quote #7
"I didn't have fun," Jason said. "You hurt me. You put smoke in my eyes. I'm going to tell." (4.52)
That brat Jason! The five year old blames Nancy for the impersonal smoke of the fire and simply assumes that it's his place to accuse her, to tell on her. His attitude mirrors the typical attitude of the white people in Jefferson, such as Mr. Stovall, who don't bother to help the downtrodden Nancy.
Quote #8
"Caddy made us come down here," Jason said. "I didn't want to." (5.3)
Now Jason turns his bratty nature on Caddy. He blames her for pressing for the kids to go to Nancy's house, when he, to some extent, wanted to go to prove he wasn't afraid. Jason, of course, is just a five-year-old, but the accusations flying around in this story give both the sense that no one is immune from danger and that in Jefferson, the minor problems of white individuals outstrip the more serious problems of black ones.
Quote #9
"I don't know," Nancy said. "I can't do nothing. Just put it off. And that don't do no good. I reckon it belong to me. I reckon what I going to get ain't no more than mine." (5.17)
This is some sad stuff. Nancy feels so fated to die that she even says that the forthcoming death she imagines belongs to her. In other words, she sees it as tied up with who she is—her very nature. She blames being black for her plight.
Quote #10
Jason was on father's back, so Jason was the tallest of all of us [...]
"You made me come," Jason said, high; against the sky it looked like father had two heads, a little one and a big one. "I didn't want to." (6.4-7)
Sitting atop his father's back makes Jason look like the king of the world. From this height, he hurls down blame upon others. It seems to go to show that the force of accusation is unopposed in Jefferson, with black individuals suffering as a result.