Memory and the Past

Throughout the novel, David’s preoccupation with the past captures the ways in which the individual’s personal history might shape his experiences in the present. As a 22-year-old young Black man, David often feels weighed by the stories that have shaped his life. In the narrative present, his life in New York often feels senseless to him. Rather than divinely orchestrated, his life feels dictated by a series of flukes “in the meaningless harmony of certain sequences” (7). For this reason, he looks to his memories for understanding, determined to “arrange the information offered to [him] by [his] own experience—locomotive sounds, occasional marginality at parties, the intermittent feeling of petty, largely useless power—in a way that would make” him feel real (161). The narrative frequently swerves into scenes of flashback to enact how David’s Christian upbringing, early childhood in Chicago, father...