In the selected text it is apparent that the African Americans are starting to stand their ground. I’m sure to Lily this scene was like déjà vu, being that Rosealeen had done a similar thing not long before this. This time, however, it was a group of whites against a group of blacks, not just one woman and a little girl. This, to me, shows the strength and courage of Rosealeen for standing up for herself against three men.

At the beginning of the passage, Lily compares the man’s face to her fathers; she sees the man, and her father as the villain. Her father will always be that to her, a loveless, cruel man. She knew, because of this, that something bad was going to happen. The way the author writes about the dog hiding behind a car, and the street going silent, puts a strong picture in my head. It’s almost like the calm before the storm, everyone knew it was coming; it was just a matter of who was going to strike first.

The boys don’t seem to take the whole situation too seriously. In my head, they are smirking, and proud at what they’ve done. When one of the men called them cowards it seems funny to me, because what they just did was very brave, and possibly very stupid. When they tell them that they will let the others go if someone just admits to it, they stick together. If I were them, I wouldn’t believe the man. I’m sure they thought that they were all in trouble, why make one person in even more trouble?

Of course, Lily wants him to confess which of the boys threw the coke bottle, so that he can leave. She seems terrified the same thing that happened to Rosaleen will happen to him; that he will be beaten and put in jail. After her try to get him to tell them, and he shrugs, she realizes that he is not going to tell, and that he is part of the group. She thinks at the end of the passage: “He chose to stand there and be one of them” (179). It seems she might think that he is better then the other boys, that he chose to lower himself to be one of them. It is obvious she has a crush on Zach and doesn’t see him as a normal African American.

Morgan McMahan