Communication and Self-Expression Theme Analysis

The next week was full of feverish activity. He talked and talked. And although his hands never paused to rest he could not tell all that he had to say. He wanted to talk to Antonapoulos of all the thoughts that had ever been in his mind and heart, but there was not time. His gray eyes glittered and his quick, intelligent face expressed great strain. Antonapoulos watched him drowsily, and his friend did not know just what he really understood.

In some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons—throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.

What would Portia say if she knew that always there had been one person after another? And every time it was like some part of her would bust in a hundred pieces. […]

Mick sat on the steps a long time. […] Her face felt like it was scattered in pieces and she could not keep it straight. The feeling was a whole lot worse than being hungry for dinner, yet it was like that. I want—I want—I want—was all that she could think about—but just what this real want was she did not know.

[Mick] wondered what kind of music [Singer] heard in his mind that his ears couldn’t hear. Nobody knew. And what kind of things he would say if he could talk. Nobody knew that either.

It was good to talk. The sound of his voice gave him pleasure. The tones seemed to echo and hang on the air so that each word sounded twice. He swallowed and moistened his mouth to speak again. He wanted suddenly to return to the mute’s quiet room and tell him of the thoughts that were in his mind. It was a queer thing to want to talk with a deaf-mute. But he was lonesome.

“A person can’t pick up they children and just squeeze them to which-a-way they wants them to be. Whether it hurt them or not. Whether it right or wrong. You done tried that hard as any man could try. And now I the only one of us that would come in this here house and sit with you like this.”

Singer was always the same to everyone. He sat in a straight chair by the window with his hands stuffed tight into his pockets, and nodded or smiled to show his guests that he understood.

The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony… […] Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.

The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. [...] Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. […] But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp. She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.

“I go around,” Blount said. He leaned earnestly across the table and kept his eyes on the mute’s face. “I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can’t make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can’t seem to make them see the truth.”

Singer nodded… […] His dinner had got cold because he couldn’t look down to eat, but he was so polite that he let Blount go on talking.

[Mick] went into the inside room. […] School and the family and the things that happened every day were in the outside room. Mister Singer was in both rooms. Foreign countries and plans and music were in the inside room. […] The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.

“And we are not alone in this slavery. There are millions of others throughout the world, of all colors and races and creeds. […] The people in this town living by the river who work in the mills. People who are almost as much in need as we are ourselves. This hatred is a great evil, and no good can ever come from it. We must remember the words of Karl Marx and see the truth according to his teachings. The injustice of need must bring us all together and not separate us.” […]

Doctor Copeland loosened the collar of his shirt, for in his throat there was a choked feeling. The grievous love he felt within him was too much.

During the moonlit January nights Singer continued to walk about the streets of town each evening when he was not engaged. The rumors about him grew bolder. […] The rich thought that he was rich and the poor considered him a poor man like themselves. And as there was no way to disprove these rumors they grew marvelous and very real. Each man described the mute as he wished him to be.

“They hollered there for three days and three nights and nobody come.”

“I am deaf,” said Doctor Copeland. “I cannot understand.”

“They put our Willie and them boys in this here ice-cold room. There were a rope hanging down from the ceiling. They taken their shoes off and tied their bare feets to this rope […] and their feets swolled up and they struggle on the floor and holler out. […] Their feets swolled up and they hollered for three nights and three days. And nobody come.”

Doctor Copeland pressed his head with his hands, but still the steady trembling would not stop. “I cannot hear what you say.”

The next morning the sun came out. The strange Southern winter was at its end. Doctor Copeland was released. A little group waited outside the jail for him. Mr. Singer was there. Portia and Highboy and Marshall Nicolls were present also. Their faces were confused and he could not see them clearly. The sun was very bright.

“Father, don’t you know that ain’t no way to help out Willie? Messing around at a white folks’ courthouse? Best thing us can do is keep our mouth shut and wait.”

“This the way it is,” Willie said. “I feel like my feets is still hurting. I got this here terrible misery down in my toes. Yet the hurt in my feets is down where my feets should be if they were on my l-l-legs. And not where my feets is now. It a hard thing to understand. My feets hurt me so bad all the time and I don’t know where they is. They never given them back to me. They s-somewhere more than a hundred m-miles from here.”

There were three mutes inside and they were talking with their hands together. […] There was a certain brotherly resemblance between them.

Singer went inside. For a moment he had trouble taking his hand from his pocket. Then clumsily he formed a word of greeting. He was clapped on the shoulder. A cold drink was ordered. They surrounded him and the fingers of their hands shot out like pistons as they questioned him.

He told his own name and the name of the town where he lived. After that he could think of nothing else to tell about himself. He asked if they knew Spiros Antonapoulos. They did not know him. Singer stood with his hands dangling loose. […] He was so listless and cold that the three mutes in the bowler hats looked at him queerly. After a while they left him out of their conversation.

But now no music was in her mind. […] It was like she was shut out from the inside room. Sometimes a quick little tune would come and go—but she never went into the inside room with music like she used to do. It was like she was too tense. Or maybe because it was like the store took all her energy and time. […] When she used to come home from school she felt good and was ready to start working on the music. But now she was always tired.

And why? What was the reason for keeping the place open all through the night when every other cafe in the town was closed? He was often asked that question and could never speak the answer out in words.