Big Black Good Man

Lena is a woman who sexually services men at the hotel where Olaf works. She is no damsel in distress: She is not intimidated by the fact that Jim is black or big, and she even scoffs at Olaf’s warning. She represents the colorblind perspective on race. For Olaf, however, Lena is first and foremost a white woman, a symbol of the superior position of whites in the world. Although Lena seems fully capable of handling herself, Olaf’s feeling that there is something unseemly or even dangerous about her connection with Jim is just one more way that Wright signals Olaf’s racism.

Wright has Olaf describe Jim in bluntly dehumanizing terms terms that exaggerate the darkness of Jim’s skin and his size. Jim, for a white man like Olaf, represents the fear inspired by blackness and black masculinity in particular. The transformation of Olaf’s perspective on Jim at the end of the story represents Olaf’s ability to see black people as human.