Guilt and crime operate at different levels in the short-story
and acquire different meanings according to the different racial points of
view.
As deputy sheriff Jesse thinks about the condition of whites
in the South, he cannot help thinking that they are "accomplices in a crime". This sudden
revelation takes him back at the time of his childhood when he was brought to witness the
castration of a black man accused of having raped a white woman. As he sees the castration, young
Jesse wishes that he was the person performing the act against the black man. This event is
crucial in defining Jesse's life and his racism. It also causes him to identify as a rapist twice
in the course of the story. He first shouts at a black civil rights leader in jail “You lucky we
pump some white blood into you every once in a while—your women!”. Then, at the end of the story,
he explicitly identifies with a "nigger" telling his wife he's going to make love to her as if he
was a black rapist: “Come on, sugar, I’m going to do you like a nigger, just like a nigger, come
on, sugar, and love me just like you’d love a nigger.” Jesse stops projecting his own repressed
guilt onto black men and becomes himself guilty of rape. This has been interpreted as Jesse's
increasing awareness of his guilt and thus as a possible sign of his becoming cured of it. Yet,
to the eyes of the white society, this acceptance of guilt would be a betrayal of the
race.
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