46 pages • 1 hour read
Charles W. ChesnuttThe Marrow of Tradition
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1901A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 32-34Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary: “The Storm Breaks”
The Wellington riot begins at three o’clock. The article from the Afro-American Banner has been republished with an editorial by Major Carteret, and white men have taken to the streets with weapons, searching all Black people and killing those who resist. Dr. Miller has been out on a call, but as he approaches the town, he runs into others who tell them about the violence being carried out against Black citizens. He runs into Watson, the lawyer, who complains that none of his so-called white friends gave him the slightest warning of the coming violence. The two men run into Josh, who tells them that the people are looking for a leader. Although Dr. Miller is tempted by this call, he ultimately tells Josh that even if they temporarily overpower the white citizens, trains full of other outraged white people will soon arrive to kill them all. Their only choice is to wait for the violence to blow over. Dr. Miller heads back to the city to find his wife and child.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Into the Lion’s Jaws”
Dr. Miller arrives home but finds that Janet and his son went to Ms. Butler’s. He journeys the one mile toward them and is stopped three times by bands of men who search him. One of the men who stops him apologizes, telling him they’re “after the vicious and criminal class” (187). This man himself was recently released from prison. When Dr. Miller runs into Ellis, he finds an escort who will prevent further such encounters. Ellis cannot bring himself to directly condemn his own people, but he does offer his aid.
Chapter 34 Summary: “The Valley of the Shadow”
Dr. Miller finds that Janet is not at the Butler home. On his way back out to search for them, he runs into Josh again. He tells the band of men that the current violence is “a fever” and that “they’ll not burn the schoolhouses, nor the hospital—they are not such fools” (191). Rather, they will only kill those who resist them. Josh is determined to stand up. As Dr. Miller rushes on, he finds Mammy Jane shot in the street on her way to the Carterets. She is near death. He presses on again and sees something that causes him to go “pale with horror” (192).
Chapters 32-34 Analysis
These chapters relay the horror of Major Carteret’s uprising. For months, he has planned to overthrow the democratically elected government. He has insisted to his wife that the events that follow will be a “political demonstration,” but they immediately become murderous. This murderousness is motivated not by law or justice but by racial hatred, and the contrast between Major Carteret’s claims and the violent massacre typifies the theme of The “Poetry” of Racism Versus the Reality of Racism.
Dr. Miller, a man who wishes only to better his community, continues to grapple with Respectability Politics in the Face of Racism. Although he is very familiar with discrimination, he still believes that even these men have the public good at heart: He does not think they will harm women or children or burn hospitals. Almost immediately, he learns that he has overestimated his townsmen. The lack of any warning highlights how tenuous the Black citizens’ standing in their town truly is; their white counterparts may tolerate them but clearly do not view them as part of the community. Even Ellis’s support is limited, his loyalties lying partly with his own race. Most tellingly, Mammy Jane was shot on her way to her white employers—a symbolic demonstration that even loyalty and compliance may not protect Black Americans under a white supremacist order. These chapters end on a cliffhanger, but with the strong implication that one of Dr. Miller’s family members has been injured as well, which will catalyze Dr. Miller’s reckoning with his society.
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By Charles W. Chesnutt
