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Themes
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LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Warmth of Other Suns, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Migration and Freedom
History, Memory, and Identity
The Legacy of the Migration
The Economics of Racism
Love and Family
Decision, Consequence, and Regret
Summary
Analysis
Whitfield, Mississippi, February 7, 1958. In Chicago, conversation often revolves around people’s struggles to escape the South. For example, the Black pro-integration newspaper publisher Arrington High ends up permanently committed to a Mississippi insane asylum after exposing segregationists visiting a Black brothel. The doctor and civil rights leader T. R. M. Howard helps High escape the asylum in two five-car motorcades, one with Mississippi plates, one with Alabama ones. High hides in a coffin for the train ride to Chicago. (Black people have used similar tactics for generations—in 1849, Henry Box Brown shipped himself north in a dry goods box and miraculously survived the 26-hour journey.) In Chicago, Dr. Howard brings Arrington High to a funeral home in his coffin, then lets him out. Many other people escaped the South the same way—although nobody will ever know how many.
The enduring connections between the North and the South extend to activism, which shows how the Great Migration is crucial to the formation of the civil rights movement. This link is another way in which migrants actually strengthen the South by leaving it for greener pastures. Arrington High’s story once again shows how Southern states go to extreme lengths to silence anyone who threatens white supremacist rule. Indeed, the fact that Howard and his allies take High all the way to the funeral home shows that they aren’t playing around: they take extreme precautions because they know how extremely draconian Jim Crow can be. Ultimately, High’s incredible escape is perhaps the book’s most vivid example of how migration meant liberation for Black Southerners.
Themes
New York, 1957. Even though George and Inez’s marriage is always rocky, they enjoy hosting visitors from Eustis, have another daughter in 1954, and adopt Inez’s troubled niece, Pat, after her sister dies in 1957. George feels sympathy for Pat, but when she arrives, he’s away for work, and Inez demands that she start paying rent. When Pat reports that George and Inez’s 12-year-old son, Gerard, is doing drugs with his friends, Inez kicks her out of the house. Still, once George returns, he becomes a father figure to Pat. Meanwhile, Gerard becomes a heroin addict—many of his friends die of overdoses, and he starts stealing from his parents. And Inez keeps mistreating Pat, although they do eventually make amends.
George’s family problems continue to mount: despite his best efforts, he finds himself embroiled in the same kind of conflict that defined his childhood. In particular, Gerard’s addiction shows how urban life in the North presents migrants and (especially) their children with unfamiliar new risks. Migrants like George were often willing to work hard and put up with discrimination, underinvestment, and delinquency in the North because they had experienced far worse in the South. But for their children, life in the Northern cities feels profoundly limiting, and drugs and crime seem like viable alternatives to a life of drudgery in poorly paid jobs like George’s.
Themes
Los Angeles, May 1962. Ray Charles writes a song about Robert, and it hits #20 on the Billboard charts. It’s called “Hide Nor Hair,” and it dramatizes the sexy Dr. Foster stealing one of Ray’s girlfriends. Robert is flooded with patients, who often spend the whole day waiting for an appointment. In return, he often invites them to gamble or party with him.
Robert has far better luck than George. He achieves everything that he dreamed about when he first left Louisiana for California. His family life may be almost as rocky as George’s, but his professional success, connections to Hollywood, and popularity more than make up for it. He’s practically a celebrity in his own right. This all confirms his lifelong belief that he deserved a far better life and career than the South was willing to give him.
Themes
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