Summary

H – H reacts angrily to being put in jail, but his cell-mate calms him down. Conversation reveals that it is several years since the American Civil War. H considers himself free, but his cellmate thinks he is being foolish: “War may be over but it ain’t ended,” he says (158).

H has been imprisoned for looking at a white woman the wrong way. As his cell-mate falls asleep, H recalls how he got there – specifically how he was arrested while traveling north in the aftermath of the breakup of his relationship with a woman named Ethe, who ended the relationship because he called her by the name of another woman.

Four days after being arrested, in the summer of 1880, H is sentenced to mine coal and marked with a scar. He quickly becomes a strong and sturdy miner. Some time into his sentence...