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Mrs. Scott
Johnson encounters an unnamed white waitress when he goes into a restaurant after work to get a cup of coffee. When he reaches the front of the line, she tells him that there’s no more coffee at the moment, which he interprets as a sign of her racism. She also flips her long blond hair in a way that he interprets as contemptuous. However, the narration makes it clear that if Johnson had looked back before walking away, he would have seen that the restaurant really was out of coffee and that the waitress was telling the truth. This interaction represents how discrimination has warped Johnson’s perception of the world around him, leading him to assume he is facing racial prejudice at every turn even when it is not present.
The Waitress Quotes in Like a Winding Sheet
The Like a Winding Sheet quotes below are all either spoken by The Waitress or refer to The Waitress . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Like a Winding Sheet
Quotes
He felt his hands begin to tingle and the tingling went all the way down to his finger tips so that he glanced down at them. They were clenched tight, hard, into fists. Then he looked at the girl again. What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, out toward her cheeks, so hard that she would never toss her head again and refuse a man a cup of coffee because he was black.
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The Waitress Quotes in Like a Winding Sheet
The Like a Winding Sheet quotes below are all either spoken by The Waitress or refer to The Waitress . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Like a Winding Sheet
Quotes
He felt his hands begin to tingle and the tingling went all the way down to his finger tips so that he glanced down at them. They were clenched tight, hard, into fists. Then he looked at the girl again. What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, out toward her cheeks, so hard that she would never toss her head again and refuse a man a cup of coffee because he was black.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
