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Not What You Meant?  There are 14 definitions for Them.

them Study Guide

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by Joyce Carol Oates
About 87 pages (26,088 words)
Them (novel) Summary

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Themes

Race and Racism

The characters in this novel are in a socioeconomic class that prohibits them from living in racially segregated areas, and the familiarity between the races boils over into contempt. Today, there are areas of all major cities that are associated with one race or another, but when them was published in 1969 separation of races was even more clearly enacted: the advancements in civil rights that allowed Blacks to legally enter all parts of society were just a few years old at the time, and their effects were hardly felt. As a lingering effect of racist housing and employment laws that had existed for almost a hundred years since the Civil War, the neighborhoods where black people lived were almost always poor neighborhoods.

In the novel, Jules Wendall often takes note of.....

This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 1,074 words. This study guide contains 26,088 words (approx. 87 pages at 300 words per page).

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them from BookRags and Gale's For Students Series. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.



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