“She was silent, but he could feel her waiting for him to do something, anything.”

Emmanuel is defined by the pressure he feels to act on the everyday injustice he faces as a Black person. The surreal opening image of the headless Fela approaching him helps characterize Emmanuel in this way, especially since this image is later revealed to be part of a dream. While Emmanuel feels that he must adjust the projection of his self-image to fit into a racist society, his subconscious challenges this attitude by showing him the outcome of his complicity—The Normalization of Violence.

“She loved saying, as a way to keep me humble, ‘I didn’t have a mother. You’re lucky. You have a mother.’”

Although the story’s events are told from the narrator’s point of view, the reader can also infer the mother’s perspective from her sayings, specifically how her presence in her son’s life radically sets them apart due to her own motherless upbringing. The narrator is resentful over the way their circumstances affect him, which extends to the indifference he perceives from his mother. However, his mother is the reason he is able to enjoy a warm meal in the story. Furthermore, the passage foreshadows the end as the narrator is humbled when he recognizes the work it took to prepare the meal for him.