The trial takes up the entire section of chapters 15-23, however I think that because it’s so prominent it doesn’t need to be discussed as much by me. It was overwhelming and I had to put the book down a lot, but it was still pretty interesting. Instead of all that, I’m going to discuss Mr. Raymond.

This tackles large problems of racism. He doesn’t hate people of colour, he’s married to one. His children are mixed. People don’t accept that, so he pretends to be a drunk. It’s more socially acceptable to be a drunk, depressed man who’s fiancee killed herself than be in a nice, loving relationship with a black woman. It’s completely ridiculous, but that’s the way it is. Mr. Raymond knows this, and decided it’s better to let them have that false sense of security than face the harsh reality that race doesn’t matter.

I don’t think this is necessarily the right thing to do, but I do understand why he did it. People still do similar things today. Act a more acceptable way to soften the blow for other people. It is probably a basic function of human behaviour.