presses its feelings and ideas to express them later in a form of cruelty against the whites. Alice Knight repressed in the dinning room and expressed when Mrs Taylor was suffering. All the anger she had stood into her mind and came back that night. Alice Knight made Gib Taylor pay with her life.At last, racism shaped the conflict of the story to expect the climax. As defined, the conflict is the problem or predicament that the main character faces. Assuming it is a personal one, it occurs when a character is uncertain or insecure and suffers mentally or spiritually. Without any doubts, racism is the conflict because it made Alice Knight uncertain and insecure and she suffered mentally and spiritually from it. It was to a point that she refused to save a human being that was going to die. Even if it is a crime, she had reasons to commit this inhuman gesture. Revenge was certainly the main one. The main character had to express her anger towards Gid Taylor and all the other white people at the conference. They screwed her week-end away from the insults of the city. Then, fear came to be a great issue for Alice Knight. She feared to be called a nigger or to be considered a thief. She could manage to be called a nigger one more time but being a thief made her walk away from the door. If only Alice Knight would have ignored Mrs Taylor saying: "You can never tell what they are liable to do". In despair, she reached for help. Although, there could be none: everyone was white, like Gib Taylor. These examples are all products of racism that led Alice to return to her room and fall asleep without remorse.In conclusion, racism was omnipresent throughout three elements of the story. The setting enhanced racism, the characters where led by racist attitude and the conflict is racism. When Ann Petry wrote her fist novel, it sold over 1,5 million copies, showing the interest the Americans had for the theme of racism. The critics s...
