Elbow Room Chapter Summary & Analysis - "Just Enough for the City" Summary

"Just Enough for the City" Summary

A variety of evangelists work the neighborhood. The Germans pretend to be humble, choosing their words carefully. The Redeemer's Friends look sheepish, but are self-righteous and smug. As the narrator likes to read magazines he will not buy, he endures the newsstand boy's talk about the Master, an elderly East Indian and accepts his broadsides, and because he enjoys watching how a beautiful, peaceful Muslim girl's body moves inside her long dress, he buys Danishes and endures hearing how, as a descendant of Mohammed's beloved muezzin, Bilalia, he must submit. The Germans' young leader also talks about his particular prophet and promises the usual remedies, but fails to get the narrator's point about how most groups find their greatest success among blacks. The Redeemer's Friends are more direct. Anything not in the Bible is false and God has said openly what he will do at the end of time. The...
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