Echo In The Bone Analysis

Words: 680
Pages: 3

Clare’s white life in the first place. This conversations sets up the main distinctions between Clare and Irene. Irene finds comfort in basing her identity on her blackness. Even though she uses her light skin to her privilege (the only reason she can have this conversation with Clare is because the hotel employees believed she was white), she defines herself by her loyalties to her race and she is skeptical that anyone could truly pass as white. Clare, however, has never felt this loyalty and that liminality has given her the “nerve” to abandon what Irene holds so dear; the security and familiarity of black community and tradition. That juxtaposition propels the novel forward and is where many of its main conflicts lie. TOPIC SENTENCE??? …show more content…
Clare says, “No, I have no boys and I don't think I'll ever have any. I'm afraid. I nearly died of terror the whole nine months before Margery was born for fear that she might be dark. Thank goodness, she turned out all right. But I'll never risk It again. Never! The strain is simply too — too hellish (36).” Although it seems to be, I would argue that terror at having a dark child is not an exaggeration. As we can see from her diction she associates goodness with whiteness and blackness the undesirable opposite. Her child is only “all right” because she did not show any visible signs of blackness. Her husband’s nickname for her is, ironically, “my nig” and he claims that he wishes to never meet a black person. The anxiety Clare feels around having a dark child is “hellish.” The emdash before the word hellish shows how the concept of a dark child is so terrible for Clare that she can barely entertain, or speak of, the possibility. Beyond the fear of exposing herself and her heritage to her husband, Clare must also be afraid of what dark skin might mean for her child. The anxiety she experienced is only a fraction of the struggle actual dark skinned individuals feel on account of their identifiable “otherness.”A person with noticeably black skin would never have the priviledge of passing. Gertrude