Chapter 8
By: Hyorim Suh
Chapter Summary
TIM is inside his room at the Men's House in Harlem. While tempted to open the letters of recommendation that Dr. Bledsoe wrote, he chooses not to. TIM is very eager and methodical about going out to meet all his possible employers. In the morning, he walks on Wall Street and stares in awe at the seemingly important Negroes carrying briefcases. His first stop for the seven letters is Mr. Bates. After giving his secretary the letter, she tells TIM that Mr. Bates will answer him through the mail. This happens to TIM to all the seven places that he drops off his letters. After more than a week of waiting with no replies, TIM gets impatient and worried. He even calls the places on the phone but is refused by the secretaries. Still worried, he writes Mr. Norton a letter telling him that he would be better off working for him. TIM receives no reply. Finally, he receives a letter from Mr. Emerson.

Characters
TIM: wanders around New York, dropping off letters to the "important" places of employment.

Secretaries: accept the letters from TIM. Motifs
Whiteness: "...was challenged by the sheer height of the white stone with its sculptured bronze facade"; the whiteness of the stone was a formidable obstacle to look at, emphasizing the hindrance that white people have suppressed onto the blacks for years and years. TIM's fate regarding employment at the present is in the hands of white people.

White women: "...and quickly hated myself for saying 'ma'am' to so young a white woman..."; the white women, who are secretaries of the "important" people, are generally described as sympathetic, genial, and polite.

Dreams: "...eating with them...gave me the eerie, out-of-focus sensation of a dream."; whether literally or metaphorically, TIM seems to be in a world of dreams. In that particular situation, he cannot believe that he is sitting next to white folks on the subway and eating with them in the same cafeteria. The North is definitely different than the South but different in a way TIM has yet to find out.

Setting
The setting begins in TIM's room. It is a clean room with a Bible on a table. The Bible causes TIM to remember Dr. Bledsoe's speeches on Sunday nights and his family prayers. The next morning, he ventures out onto bustling Wall Street. It is dark with tall buildings and narrow streets. He gets a bit paranoid here, wondering if the street is guarded by hidden and unseen eyes waiting for someone to make a wrong move. He feels watched and nervous. When he enters Mr. Bate's office, it is quite luxurious looking and he observes the portraits on the wall. He makes an observation that the white people of the portraits have "an assurance and arrogance" that he had never before seen in anybody, even Dr. Bledsoe.

Quotations
"They reminded me fleetingly of prisoners carrying their leg irons as they escaped from a chain gang. Yet they seemed aware of some self-importance, and I wished to stop one and ask him why he was chained to his pouch": TIM refers to the sight of seeing Negroes hurrying along on Wall Street with leather pouches strapped to their wrists. It seems as though blacks are forever subservient to whites; they have yet to break free from the chains of service under whites. Although blacks were freed from slavery (as in "escaped from a chain gang"), they were still chained to the slavery of society's repression.

"White folks were funny; Mr. Bates might not wish to see a Negro the first thing in the morning": This shows TIM's anxiety and conditioned response of having been raised under the structural omnipotence of white people. He shows his feeling of inferiority of his blackness.

"...for since they had learned that I was to be assigned to an important job, they treated me with a certain deference; therefore I was careful to hide my growing doubts": TIM refers to the fellow people at the Men's House. He does not talk about his problems in fear that those people will lose respect for him. He holds an invisible facade in front them in order to not lose face. TIM is not himself because he does not want to be embarrassed for not having found a job yet.

Thematic Elements
Cover-up: TIM covers up his doubts and worries to the people at the Men's House so that they retain their deference to him. The bosses, by not responding to TIM, cover up the situation even more by making TIM wonder why nobody has responded.

Hopelessness: TIM feels hopeless momentarily because nobody has replied back to him, not even Mr. Norton. This hopelessness is lifted when he gets a letter from Mr. Emerson.