Keywords

Any time a black character appears to have a premonition or intuition about how events will play out. I'm thinking her of Job in "Uncle Willy" who melancholically tags along even though he knows things will end badly. The same could be said for any number of Black servants who are forced to entertain their master's fancies. Dilsey is another example. JB

Whenever a Black body is described or there is a touch between a White body and Black body. For example, the unnamed narrator describing Job's body in "Uncle Willy": "he felt like a handful of scrawny dried sticks" (246).

I added this keyword to mark places where a character or text contemplates or imagines exceeding ordinary or usual boundaries. Specifically, this was added for when Quentin starts imagining "a hell beyond that" for him and Caddy. It can be used when "beyond" or a similar construction is used in figurative ways. JBP

This tag is used when a white character's appearance or behavior is associated with "blackness." Examples: when Jason Compson says in The Sound and the Fury that Miss Quentin's promiscuous behavior means she is "acting like a nigger" (181) or when Vardaman Bundren notes how his brother Cash's injured foot and his brother Jewel's burned back are turning black, "like a nigger's foot" or back (224). The trope isn't simply descriptive: it implies a loss of status, a threat to one's racial identity.