Roselily having cold feet.
Roselily had been living a life as a single mother with four children. She had been working long hours in a sewing factory with constant worry of her future. To make her life easier, she agrees to marry a man from a different city with a different faith, who is clear in his expectation that she wouldn’t work. Despite being happy for the stability the union offers, she is unsure because she doesn’t love him and begins to have a second thoughts. This is ironic as she begins to long for the life she had been working to leave behind.
Ruel being unhappy with narrator’s consent.
By the end of the story, ‘Really, Doesn’t Crime Pay’, the narrator, after feeling betrayed by Mordecai Rich and apathy from her husband, submits to her condition as financially dependent on a man in a loveless marriage. She begins to focus on her household duties, and doesn’t object to sex even when she didn’t want to. But Ruel begins to feel unhappy with it. For him, submission of body is not enough for him, even though it is what he really wanted.
Dee’s realization of her heritage.
In the very popular story, ‘Everyday Use’ Dee declares her sister to be backward as according to her Maggie doesn’t realize what her heritage is. Dee is one of the people who after their education, which in reality should have humbled her, gets more uptight about their knowledge. She changes her name that she feels is more appropriate as per her African roots, and keeps anything that might be old in her mother’s household as heirloom, not realizing the true importance of heritage.
Tante Rosie’s magic
In one of the most delicious twists in all stories, ‘The Revenge of Hannah Kemhuff’ which has a theme of African religion and magic, uses a placebo instead of magic to affect the revenge. After the disclosure by Tante Rosie’s assistant that they could cause bad things to happen to Sarah Marie if she gave them her hair, faeces or blood. The thoughts that black people may be out to get her using her own hair shakes her so much that she begins to store it all. The mania eventually kills her.
Destitute woman being thrown out of a church
In the story, ‘The Welcome Table’, the poor woman should have been have been helped in the church as is the instruction in Christianity or any other religion. But she is rudely thrown out just because of her clothes. She rather hallucinates a vision of Christ on the streets with her, instead of being with the pious in the church.
