46 pages • 1 hour read
Lynn NottageCrumbs From the Table of Joy
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Act IIChapter Summaries & Analyses
Act II, Scene 1 Summary
To the audience, Ernestine wonders about Lily’s revolution, which still hasn’t happened. Lily applies makeup, sipping from a flask and reminiscing about her youth. Men used to woo her and Sandra, but Lily was the prettier sister.
Lily doesn’t accompany the Crumps to the Mission banquet welcoming Father Divine. At a massive table, the family indulges in enormous quantities of food, although Gerte is bothered by the waste. Godfrey, with pockets full of questions, is trembling with excitement about finally meeting Father Divine. Ernestine imagines that Gerte shimmies into a clingy dress and serenades them.
A flat tire keeps Father Divine from showing up, leaving Godfrey crestfallen as he realizes that he will have to wait an entire year for another chance to meet him. Ermina wonders quietly why Father Divine can’t just fly there since he’s supposed to be a god. Gerte reassures Godfrey that the Mission did something powerful by bringing them together, and there are plenty of other preachers.
Elsewhere, Lily laughs smugly and smokes. Ernestine says that Lily dismisses religion as a government tool to pacify the people, but Gerte might destroy their God altogether.
Act II, Scene 2 Summary
Time passes, and Ermina becomes popular in the neighborhood. She starts dating and picks up the local vernacular. They’re the only Black people on their block, so they gather with Black kids from other streets. Ernestine reminds Ermina that she isn’t allowed to talk to boys, and Ermina mocks her for being so prudish.
Ernestine doesn’t have any friends, but the kids prod both girls with questions about their white stepmother, which bothers them. Ermina thinks having a white stepmother is unnatural and fantasizes about paying a neighborhood felon to take out her kneecaps. One day, Ermina asks if Gerte was a Nazi in Germany, which upsets her.
Gerte tries to bond with Ernestine over her graduation dress, but Ernestine feels hurt when Gerte offers advice. Gerte switches the radio on, but Ernestine points out that Godfrey doesn’t let them play music on Sundays, and Gerte turns it off.
Lily enters, hungover from heavy drinking, and she and Gerte disagree about whether to keep the radio on. Gerte likes music and talks about hearing a Black musician, Pierre Boussard, sing jazz for the first time in Berlin, which is part of what attracted her to the United States, but she adheres to Godfrey’s wishes. Lily says he is controlling, but Gerte likes his predictability and how he returns home smelling like a bakery with pockets full of cookies.
Lily fills a glass with whiskey and becomes defensive when Gerte declines to drink with her. They argue about Lily’s revolution and unemployment, and Lily mocks Gerte for her and Godfrey’s chaste marriage. When Gerte suggests that Lily get dressed each day to feel better about herself, Lily claims that people only see her skin color. This exasperates Gerte, who nearly starved to death after World War II, but Lily and Ernestine agree that their skin color marks them as different everywhere. Their fight continues when Gerte asks Ernestine to fetch a bowl, and Lily intervenes, exclaiming that she didn’t say “please.” Gerte retorts that she has noticed Lily stealing from Godfrey’s pockets and selling her clothes. However, the two women share a moment of warmth and laugh about Godfrey. Ernestine returns with the bowl and goes back to her dress. Lily snaps the radio on again, explaining the significance of music as communication in Africa, where people in villages live communally.
Ernestine admits that she imagined the comradery between Lily and Gerte. In reality, Lily drinks and sulks, and Gerte exits. Ernestine wants to talk about her almost-complete dress and how her mother chose the pattern. She took Gerte’s suggestion to put lace on the collar, but Lily says that the lace looks unsophisticated and childish, which is how white people prefer them to be. Ernestine tells the audience that she and Ermina looked at the expensive lace at Woolworths every day until Ermina stole it for her.
Lily mocks Ernestine for thinking that graduation will make her an adult. Feeling hurt, Ernestine blames the whiskey for her aunt’s cruelty. She tears the lace she just sewed on, demanding to know if Lily is happy now. Lily replies, “The world gives nothing, Ernie. It takes” (52).
Act II, Scene 3 Summary
Gerte and Godfrey rush through the front door, surprising Ernestine. Gerte’s clothes are soaked with blood, and Godfrey bleeds from a head wound. He grabs sewing scissors and heads for the door, and Gerte pleads with him to stop. Ermina and Lily enter, drawn by the commotion, and Godfrey and Gerte relay that a group of white men on the subway became incensed at the sight of the interracial couple. In a verbal altercation, one called Godfrey the n-word and smashed a Coke bottle in his face. Ernestine offers to call the police, but both Lily and Godfrey agree that they won’t help. Gerte demands to know where Lily’s revolution is when a married couple can’t go to the movies. Lily replies that this is what Black people live with all the time and asks how Gerte lived under the Nazis without learning about hate. Upset, Ernestine blames Gerte and says that she hates her.
Lily chastises Godfrey for thinking that marrying a white woman changes anything. Godfrey spits back that Lily should find people who are as revolutionary as she is. They argue, and Lily ultimately asks why he didn’t choose her instead of finding a white wife. Gravely, he says, “We on different roads Lily” (56). Lily accuses Godfrey of making her and the girls feel like they owe him an apology for being themselves. She storms out despite Ernestine’s pleas for Godfrey to stop her.
Gerte wants Godfrey to prioritize her feelings as his wife, and he reaches for his notebook to write a reminder. Gerte exclaims that his endless lists are a way to avoid action, and she pulls out boxes of stashed notes, which she rips into pieces. Their scuffle turns into laughter, and they share a deep kiss. Gerte tells him to make a choice.
Act II, Scene 4 Summary
Ernestine picks up the confetti of paper scraps and Godfrey’s questions for Father Divine. He asks about raising his girls, enduring racism at work, withstanding Lily’s temptation, and handling his anger.
Lily enters, whiskey in hand, and advises Ernestine to let Godfrey clean his own mess. She claims that she was asked to lecture “on the plight of the Negro woman” but will be at Ernestine’s graduation (59). Ernestine asks for some whiskey, and Lily obliges. Ernestine thinks she’s a communist; she’s lonely, and as a revolutionary, she’d get respect. Lily was branded a communist in Florida when she spoke up at church, calling for action instead of simply preaching about segregation. Lily tells Ernestine to take her diploma and become a nurse or some other job that makes her necessary, and that will be revolutionary.
Gerte enters, and Ernestine fantasizes that Lily offers her a drink and she accepts it. Instead, Gerte goes to bed, followed by Ernestine. Impulsively, Lily tears the lace off her slip and begins sewing it onto the dress.
Act II, Epilogue Summary
Ernestine, wearing her dress, carries her diploma. The four Crumps, minus Lily, who has disappeared, celebrate with gifts and cake. Godfrey surprises Ernestine with a job at the bakery, but she politely turns it down, perplexing him. She is headed to Harlem instead.
Ernestine tells the audience that she went to the address that Lily referenced as the communist headquarters, finding only a dive bar where the patrons remember Lily. Ernestine talks excitedly about joining the Party and the revolution, and the bartender sends her to another address: City College. She enrolls and stays close to her family. Ermina has a daughter named Sandra and goes back to Florida to live with their grandmother.
When Lily’s body is found, it is marked by drug use. Ermina identifies the body. As Ernestine studies, she finds her aunt’s spirit and joins the front lines of the Civil Rights movement. Ernestine marries and one day sends a son to college; another of her sons dies from drug use. In this moment, however, Ernestine is walking in Harlem toward her future.
Act II Analysis
The second act begins with Godfrey, Gerte, and the two girls getting ready to attend the Holy Communion Banquet at the Mission, which Godfrey has been looking forward to. He has so many questions for the Father that he worries about which ones to prioritize. The Crumps sit at a huge table, dwarfed by the enormity of the banquet and the amount of seating space that is filled by other unseen members of the Mission. This enormous spread with so many seats seems to represent the table of joy, and the Crumps have finally been invited to take seats at the feast instead of settling for crumbs. To Godfrey, the lavish meal is second to the personal and spiritual enlightenment he expects to receive when he meets Father Divine. The banquet represents the end of his uncertainty and suffering; he will finally receive all of the answers he has been seeking. The fact that Father Divine never shows up undermines the idea that life can be controlled, or even figured out—each person is left to contend with their own fears and mysteries and must make choices without knowing for certain whether they are right.
At the banquet, the Crumps experience different stages of Coping through Faith and Fantasies. Ernestine and Ermina are dressed up in uncommonly fancy white dresses with black Vs sewn on their chests to emphasize their supposed commitment to purity. Godfrey imagines their devout purity is real, a fantasy he maintains as he tries to be a good father with a moral family. Ernestine views the feast with a deep hunger as food has represented love and comfort to her through all the emotional turmoil. While she is skeptical of the Mission’s religious teachings, she identifies the meal as sacred and symbolic, stating, “We’re eating for all mankind” (40). She sees the significance of having a seat at the table and being served an extravagant meal. Godfrey remembers the last time he ate such a meal was at his uncle’s wake, and it was prepared by several women who were trying to outdo each other. This connects the indulgence in food to death rituals and suggests that the meals brought as condolences for Sandra’s death were less impressive or less appreciated in the thick of intense grief.
To Godfrey, the feast is like the ritual of communion. Gerte, who is less invested in the Mission, is uncomfortable with what she sees as food waste, revealing later that she experienced starvation during the war. Meanwhile, Lily is not invited to the table of joy, or at least she believes as much; in her own fantasy, she sees herself as a revolutionary and assumes that she is too bold to be accepted in a religious setting. The joy and elation of the feast are cut short for Godfrey when he learns that Father Divine can’t come, but he refuses to relinquish his fantasy; he copes with this enormous disappointment by waiting for him anyway, believing that he’ll show until it’s undeniable that he won’t. Ernestine copes with the memory of her father’s sorrow by imposing a fantasy in which Gerte wears a sexy cocktail dress, climbs onto the table, and sings a suggestive German cabaret song as Godfrey stares, shocked and open-mouthed. The dinner is disappointing for everyone, and each Crump copes with this by imagining a different outcome, showing a shared family tendency toward escape as a coping mechanism.
In Godfrey, Gerte finds the safety and stability she desperately needed as a directionless immigrant who came to the United States on a whim—notably, both she and Godfrey were drawn to New York by the fantasy of meeting a public figure. Neither of them achieves that dream, but they are led to each other, showing how fulfillment and healing can come from unexpected places. However, Gerte and Lily clash, not only as rivals for Godfrey’s affection but because Lily believes in the necessity of enduring The Pain of Change and Revolution. Gerte doesn’t understand the dire need for change and revolution for Black Americans; with almost no experience of American racism, Gerte marries into a Black family, unaware of how her new husband and stepdaughters experience the world differently than she does. While Gerte does not show biased viewpoints herself, she fails to recognize the realities of racial difference and the existence of bias until Godfrey is the victim of a hate crime—her inability to recognize anti-Black racism in the United States is paralleled by her dismissal of questions about Nazi Germany. Through Gerte, Nottage illustrates that one’s personal opinions or lack of bias are not enough to create meaningful change; her love for her husband does not prevent others from taking offense to interracial relationships and acting violently.
After Godfrey is attacked, Ernestine blames Gerte. When she reaches into her father’s pockets for the cookies he keeps there, she learns how easily his love offerings can be reduced to crumbs, just as Godfrey’s joyful movie date with his new wife is smashed. The characters all face questions of Blackness, Whiteness, and the American Dream. Gerte must be told that some things are reserved for white people and forbidden to Black people, and Lily isn’t using race as an excuse for her struggles. They can’t pretend that skin color doesn’t exist as Gerte wants to, because everyone sees their difference and treats them accordingly. The American Dream, which promises equal opportunities regardless of the circumstances of one’s birth, does not, in the 1950s United States, include the circumstance of being born Black. For Godfrey, the best he can hope for is his steady bakery job, which he tries to share with his oldest daughter. However, Ernestine rejects this job, a symbol that she is ready to fight for social change, hoping that this next wave of activism will foment a revolution.
At the end of the play, Ernestine wears the graduation dress that she has been working on since the beginning of Act I. It is imperfect, but she made it herself, picking up a project that her mother promised but was unable to even start. The dress is significant for both sisters as it represents an enormous step that no one in her family has yet achieved. Ermina demonstrates this when she steals expensive lace for the dress, deciding that Ernestine deserves it. When Gerte offers suggestions for using the lace, inadvertently hurting Ernestine’s feelings by mentioning the crooked collar, she doesn’t seem to understand what the dress means to her. On the contrary, Lily understands the importance of the dress to her niece but attacks her because she’s feeling spiteful. She mocks the lace as childish, which prompts Ernestine to rip it off. Later, Lily makes amends by sewing the lace from her own slip onto the dress. Ernestine wears it this way, the dress representing how her family has influenced who she is, even if they are imperfect. Ernestine goes on to join the revolution, moving forward where Lily left off and cementing the play’s emphasis on generational legacies in fighting for change.
Related Titles
By Lynn Nottage
