Ann Petry - Like a Winding Sheet (Overview - Part 4)

Read part 1 of this overview which includes a brief introduction, includes a link to the full text of the story, some details about the author's life as well as an analysis of setting and plot.

Part 2 contains an analysis of the characters that appear in the story and the point of view.

Part 3 discusses the symbolism found in this complex short story while this final post deals with the themes and the title of the story. 


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Ann Petry - Like A Winding Sheet

Title / Foreshadowing

• Mae remarks that Johnson looks like he’s in “a winding sheet … A shroud …”
• compares him to a huckleberry in a winding sheet
• end of the story: Johnson says the phrase to best describe what was happening to him, the hold over him that made him lose control of his hands was that he was “enmeshed in a winding sheet”
• Johnson specifies the verb he uses to describe how the sheet comes into contact with him: it doesn’t simply cover him (as a winding sheet normally would) but enmeshes him
• “enmesh” indicates entrapment, entanglement between the threads of a net and thus little chance of escape
• the sheet is like a boa constrictor, its whiteness strangling and choking him: this is something he realizes at the very start of the story when he sees his dark arms at odds with the white sheet
• this is why he checks Mae by telling her “that’s no way to talk” when she points out the color contrast to him: he finds it inappropriate to mention such things (what’s implied is that he’s already been the victim of such comments and, like his legs, is exhausted of hearing them pointed out to him over and over again)

• this is why Petry writes that he smiled “in spite of himself”: this is no laughing matter for him, but in spite of himself he goes along with Mae’s giggly mood


• the title foreshadows a death: in connection with the very early mention of the winding sheet, we assume that Johnson’s death is imminent 
• what we can’t imagine is that his symbolic death is the result of the racist treatment he is victim to which also makes him blind to the reality around him: he converts verbal violence into bias first (he thinks the coffee girl refuses to serve him because he's black) then into physical violence within the home

Themes

• violence
• different forms
• verbal abuse: emotional form of violence
• Mrs. Scott makes Johnson feel like trash
• Mae also practices a form of verbal abuse by unreasonably ordering him around, reminding him of his lateness to work, reminding him of his color and equating him with a huckleberry (along with the connotations it carries)
• psychological violence: threats are used to cause fear in someone
• Johnson uses this to make Mrs. Scott back away from the situation through body language (“He stepped closer to her. His fists were doubled. His lips were drawn back in a thin line. A vein in his forehead stood out swollen, thick.”)
• in contrast, he doesn’t give Mae the chance to do the same
• Mae is also exerting this form of abuse on Johnson to a point: her inability to provide solace for his aching legs or his lack of sleep due to her cooking, listening to the radio, etc… are a source of mental pressure
• social inequality = financial abuse
• Mrs. Scott has the power to dismiss Johnson which is why he can’t do much about her racism
• factory policy which treats workers like beggars waiting for a handout on payday in contrast to other plants where wages are taken to employees at their workbenches
• being forced to work in a plant standing for 10 hours is what ultimately breaks Johnson: his physical exhaustion weakens his spirit of restraint and he gives in to the pleasure of striking another human being
• physical abuse: the most overt form of violence
• other forms are more subtle and may be present for a long time, gnawing away at people’s mental well-being
• violence is more readily detectable
• the story wants us to ponder on the factors that push people to exert physical pain on others
• is Johnson the sole individual to blame for the story’s ending?
• does violence always beget violence or is it an individual’s fault when self-restraint isn’t exercised?
• is violence bred by others or innate?
• Johnson changes from “He wasn’t made that way” to “he couldn’t drag his hands away from her face”. Why?
• his hands seem separate part of the body / they aren’t his / they had “developed a separate life of their own over which he had no control”
• there’s a “curious tingling in his fingers”
• he swallows his anger but the tension remains in his hands
• he imagines the pleasure his hands would have felt had they struck the forewoman, how “deeply satisfying” it would have been to have cracked her narrow lips
• his heart starts “pumping blood so fast he had felt it tingle even in the tips of his fingers”
• he rationalizes that his act of violence would make Mrs. Scott think twice before calling anyone else “nigger”
• he rationalizes the reason why he can’t strike a woman erroneously: he doesn’t say that people just shouldn’t hit other people, but that because “a woman can’t hit back the same way a man did” that’s why he’s having trouble hitting one
• he concludes that hitting a woman would relieve the tension in his hands: his body is too tired to continue resisting the feeling of pleasure striking a woman would give his hands
• at the end of the day, the ache in his legs becomes pain that “clawed up into his groin so that he seemed to be bursting with pain and he told himself that it was due to all that anger-born energy that had piled up in him … and so it had spread through him like a poison – from his feet and legs all the way up to his head.”
• Johnson’s physical pain together with the insults he’s heard and his ridiculous rationale during his various encounters are topped by Mae’s comment of him pretending to be tough (cf. Mae’s attack on his virility)
• conclusion: slow road to demise
• step 1: violence seeps in through various forms (verbal, mental, emotional abuse)
• step 2: drains body and mind of its defenses (self-restraint, logic)
• step 3: takes over body and mind (warps logic, controls muscles and heart rate, makes people jump to the wrong conclusions, transforms them into bigots)
• step 4: traps them so they can’t free themselves even though they are appalled / horrified (“something inside him was holding him, binding him to this act, wrapping and twisting about him so that he had to continue it.”)

• racism / bigotry
• form of violence that acts as a catalyst producing more violence
• the story doesn’t only deal with racial inequality but also gender inequality: Johnson equates all women’s actions to signs of contempt aimed at him (e.g. tossing one’s head back) – he is no better than Mrs. Scott

• marriage
• how do spouses maintain a healthy relationship amid the many problems they face?
• neglect brings about lack of respect (which may lead to domestic violence): Mae is moving about the house, doing what she wants to do without putting her trivial tasks on hold to talk to her husband
• she is never seen sitting down with him, taking the time to really look at him and see what the matter is
• Johnson doesn’t seem to have the upper hand in what goes on in the house from time to time: he isn’t seen holding his own; he must make allowances for Mae
• he could have just left the house and let Mae deal with her superstitious anxieties – then he would have arrived to work on time
• he could have gotten to bed earlier instead of stayed sitting in a big chair in the living room every night after getting back from work – he’d be less tired, stronger to deal with each day’s hardships