black boy :: essays research papers

This novel is set in Harlem in New York City. The Grimes migrate to the North in search of new opportunities. Elizabeth bids goodbye to her aunt in Maryland and leaves with Richard. She arrives in New York with great expectations but she is sorely disappointed. "Here, in this great city where no one cared, where people might live in the same building for years and never speak to one another, she found herself, when Richard took her in his arms, on the edge of a steep place and down she rushed, on the descent uncaring, into the dreadful sea." New York is a big and bustling city but it is heartless. The only way Elizabeth and Richard make their existence meaningful is by visiting places of interest in the city on weekends. They go to the Central Park or the Museum of Natural history to take their mind off from the daily drudgery. John Grimes does the same when he has to escape out of his dingy quarters at Harlem. He climbs a hill nearby to view New York in all its majesty and imagines himself to be an influential figure in the city. From there he walks over to mid-town Manhattan and Central Park to get a feel of the city. John experiences a sense of freedom in all the places outside his home at Harlem. His house was "narrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no labour could ever make it clean. Dirt was in the walls and the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink where roaches spawned; was in the fine ridges of the pots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom, hanging above the store; was in the wall against which they hung, and revealed itself where the paint had cracked and leaned outward in stiff squares and fragments, the paper-thin underside webbed with black." In similar quarters live Florence and other Negroes like her. If they look out of their window, they can see "scraps of paper and frosty dust, and --- the hanging signs of stores and storefront churches." In the evenings, the Negro families visit the churches at Harlem called the ‘Temple of the Fire Baptized.’ "It was not the biggest church in Harlem, nor yet the smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it was the holiest and best." John and Roy attend the