Going To Meet The Man

For Jesse, early exposure to sexualized violence against black bodies links the abhorrence of that violence with sexual arousal and his own masculinity. Torturing Mrs. Julia Blossom's grandson in the jail as an adult stirs "something deep in [Jesse] and deep in his memory" (233). This memory of witnessing the lynching of a black man accused of rape, evokes "an overwhelming fear" (239), which "contain[s] a curious and dreadful pleasure" (239). Similarly, when using the thought of raping a black woman to arouse himself, Jesse's excitement feels "more like pain" (229) and, when torturing Mrs. Blossom's grandson in the jail, Jesse begins to "hurt all over with that peculiar excitement" (232). The man's public castration acts as a form of community-building for the white people involved and makes Jesse see his father as a larger-than-life hero and his mother as "more beautiful" (247) than ever. Jesse hears his parents have sex the night of the lynching, thus tying the violence done to black bodies inextricably with sexual arousal in Jesse. His predilection for violating black women and using the phallic cattle prod to torture black men demonstrate as much.

Growing up in a white-supremacist society, Jesse feels that white people are inherently good and black people inherently "fight against God and go against the rules laid down in the Bible" (235).