62 pages • 2 hours read
Chester HimesIf He Hollers Let Him Go
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1945A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Chapter 4 begins a little later the same day. Bob asks around the ship for a tacker to help with a quick project, but all the white men refuse to help Bob. Instead, someone suggests he ask Madge Perkins to do it. Bob approaches her to ask for help, and it takes a moment before he realizes it is the same “peroxide blonde” he encountered earlier. He asks for her help anyway, and she responds, “I ain’t gonna work with no n*****!” (29). Bob instinctively replies, “Screw you then, you cracker bitch!” (29). Soon after this encounter, Bob gets called to the department superintendent’s office and demoted from leaderman to working as a mechanic because of his behavior. Bob is enraged and Mac, the superintendent, insists that since Bob is an intelligent young man and was entrusted with a position of authority, he should have more respect for women and set a better example for the other “colored boys.” Bob points out that Madge spat a racist slur at him first, but Mac completely evades addressing this part of the situation altogether, continually insisting that Bob should not have lost his temper. When Bob protests again, Mac threatens to fire him altogether, which would result in Bob losing his job deferment and having to enlist in the military.
Extremely angry, Bob leaves Mac’s office and joins in a craps game with fellow white and Black workers during the lunch hour. He wins, but the white men jeer at him, spouting racist slurs and threatening to beat him up. Bob lashes out at them, but one white man in particular, a blonde man with blue eyes “blistered with hate” (34), knocks him out. When Bob comes to, all he can think about is finding the white man who knocked him out and killing him. He borrows a chiv—a handmade weapon—from another Black worker and finds out where the white man is working so he can track him down. Bob feels sick to his stomach and nearly throws up. He goes to the copper shop and sees the man. They look each other in the eye, but Bob decides to leave. Instead of giving the man a chance to fight back, Bob decides he wants to murder him in cold blood. Still staring at the man, the “sick, scared, gone feeling” leaves Bob’s stomach and he thinks: “There’s one goddamned thing, you can’t take your color with you [when you die]” (36).
Chapter 5 Summary
After the events of the day, Bob decides to leave work early. As he drives away thinking about his plan to kill the white man, he feels an unexpected sense of pleasure. The very thought of killing “a white man, a supreme being” makes him feel “relaxed, confident, strong […] just like a white boy outta feel” (37). As Bob plays hooky from work, this feeling of pleasure endures as he has a series of relaxed encounters with different white people. He goes to a bar, filled with white and Black folks alike, and enjoys talking with several friendly white patrons. Bob imagines these interactions mean he “must be turning white really and truly” (38). Consequently, when he leaves the bar, he picks up two young white boys who need a ride. They drive through town, laughing and joking about where they are from and different women they see walking down the street. As he drives and banters playfully with the two white boys, Bob wonders when “white people started getting white—or rather, when they started losing it” (39).
After dropping the boys off, Bob hangs around a Black neighborhood until time for the shipyard to close. He drives back to the shipyard and makes it into the parking lot just as the young white man who beat him up earlier is leaving. Bob follows him home. When the other man’s ride drops him off at his house, Bob gets his gun out of the glove compartment and gets out of the car. The man sees him and tenses up, walking quickly up to the front door of his house. The door opens and two young children and a woman come outside. The man hurriedly shepherds the children back inside and whispers something to his wife, who looks frightened. The man pushes them all roughly inside the house and shuts and bolts the door. Feeling cool and untouchable, Bob concedes that he does not have to kill the man right now. They could make him work as a mechanic back at the shipyard or beat him to a pulp if they wanted to; nothing could bother him anymore because he “had a peckerwood’s life in the palm of [his] hand and that made all the difference” (44).
Chapter 6 Summary
When Bob gets home, he makes dinner reservations at the nicest hotel in town. He calls Alice to tell her to wear evening clothes for their date that evening. Alice repeatedly tries to guess where they are going, but Bob says it is a surprise. Ella Mae passes through the room as he hangs up the phone with Alice. As Bob undresses to take a shower, Ella Mae observes that he must be very clean since he is taking his second shower of the day. Bob says he is “tryna turn white” (46). Ella Mae says all he does is talk about white folks all the time and that, in dating Alice, he has got “the whitest colored girl [he] could find” (46). Bob tells Ella Mae she sounds like a “Black gal.”
Bob gets dressed in his nicest clothes and goes to pick up Alice from her parents’ home. Bob chats with Mrs. Harrison, Alice’s mother, while Alice finishes getting ready. Mrs. Harrison brings up Bob’s job at the shipyard, assuming that the Black workers “are mostly Southern migrants” (49), and Bob gets irritated by her negativity about the Black working class. Mrs. Harrison comments that he looks pleased about something and wonders if it is because he is excited about returning to college in the fall. Realizing that Alice has told her that Bob plans to return to college for the sake of appearances, Bob goes along with it. Mrs. Harrison feels that she and the doctor have set a good example for young Black men, showing them “just what they can accomplish if they try” (50). Bob is angered by her wealthy smugness, so he claims that what he is actually pleased about today is that he has found a way to “get even with the white folks” (50). Mrs. Harrison is horrified by this, nervously questioning why Bob would ever want to get even with the white folks when they are trying so hard to help Black folks. Instead of trying to get even, she tells Bob that Black people must prove themselves worthy so that they can earn their equality. As Mrs. Harrison continues, she gets extremely agitated and claims that some Black folks do not deserve more than they are getting. Bob, surprised by how upset she has become, finally tells her she is right about everything. The conversation ends abruptly as Alice comes downstairs, looking radiant in her evening attire.
Chapter 7 Summary
After leaving Alice’s parent’s house, Bob and Alice drive to the hotel to dine. Alice is anxious because she is not in the mood to be refused service by the white waitstaff and asks to go somewhere that Black folks frequent instead. Bob insists everything will be fine until they walk into the lobby of the hotel and it is filled with white folks—and only white folks. As Alice and Bob enter, they find themselves the recipients of shocked stares.
Despite the patrons’ shock, Bob and Alice approach the concierge, who says they will not be able to dine without a reservation and seems relieved to be able to turn them away. Bob says he did make a reservation and the head waiter reluctantly goes to check. Bob and Alice wait for what seems an eternity as several white parties are seated before them. This makes Bob angry, but he reminds himself that he is going to kill a white man tomorrow, which calms him down.
The head waiter seats Bob and Alice next to the kitchen, as far away from the white patrons as possible, making Bob angrier. Alice is embarrassed by Bob’s visible loss of composure. She attempts to maintain her poise, feeling confident about ordering food off of the French menu, but recoils when she thinks a woman at a nearby table is laughing at her. As they eat, Bob notices a young white couple sitting near them. The woman is blonde; he stares at her for a little while, before shifting his gaze and making eye contact with her husband. They look calmly at each other until the white man turns to stare at Alice like Bob stared at his wife. Bob feels a sudden, strange urge to be the man’s friend.
When the check comes, there is a message written on it, reading: “We served you this time but we do not want your patronage in the future” (59). Bob is so angry—and Alice is so mortified—by the whole affair they practically run out of the hotel to wait for the chauffeur to bring their car. The stress comes to a head and they argue while Alice drives, and Alice admits that being seen with a Black man at an establishment that only serves white people exposes her as being Black herself. In response, Bob accuses her of preferring to be seen in public with white folks, and Alice says she does not want to see Bob again.
Chapters 4-7 Analysis
Chapters 4 to 7 give a clearer sense of what Bob’s life is like outside of the cottage he shares with Ella Mae Brown and her family, developing the theme of American Equality and Systemic Racism in the process. It provides more detail about the realities of Bob’s job at the shipyard, Bob’s experiences as he hangs out around town, and what his dating life is like. These scenes start to reveal the source of Bob’s constant, debilitating fear: Everywhere he goes, he feels that white people are controlling his life. If Chapters 1 to 3 demonstrated how white folks are the main source of Bob’s fear, Chapters 4 to 7 show that it is not just the constant presence of white folks that sets him off. It is the fact that everywhere Bob goes—at work, at bars and restaurants, driving up the street—he is being policed by whiteness. In other words, the white social structures that surround him are constantly observing his behavior, and if he does something that threatens the establishment—like refusing to take abuse from a white woman at work—he is swiftly punished.
What seems to be most disconcerting for Bob about white society’s ability to control Black people is the unpredictability of situations in which this occurs. In one instance, Bob goes into a bar that is frequented by both white and Black patrons, and the white customers are kind and friendly. Yet, in another instance, Bob takes Alice on a date to a fancy hotel restaurant and is asked never to return again. For Bob, life is unstable; every passing encounter with a white person could be either pleasant or cruel. In these examples, Bob seems to be trying to make sense of the selectivity of racist and discriminatory attitudes among individual white people. He does not understand why some white people are eager to use their whiteness to oppress and discriminate, while others choose to be friendly and kind. This lack of social stability leaves Bob on edge, and his jumpiness manifests in his unpredictable temper.
The issue of Racist Antagonism and Color Prejudice is thus central to If He Hollers, and Bob’s experience with Alice’s family the evening of their fancy date at the discriminatory hotel is the most revealing scenario in this section of chapters. It effectively exemplifies the appropriateness of Bob’s questions about what makes a person white or Black. Bob—and other white and Black people—are obsessed with the tone of Black people’s skin. Being with a Black woman who has lighter skin is viewed as some kind of impossible accomplishment, something to be proud of. This becomes even clearer as readers realize that Alice’s family is proud of their ability to blend in with white society at social gatherings due to their educational backgrounds and socioeconomic situation. However, there is also a sense of resentment toward Black people with lighter skin among Black folks—even a sense that they are betraying their race, particularly if they insist that Black people should be patient in the face of oppression. Through these dynamics, Himes reveals the true power of whiteness: Even possessing a little bit of it—in Alice’s case, through her lighter skin—gives a person significantly more power and potential.
The novel thus presents whiteness as a system of power. For instance, when Bob gives two young white boys a ride across town, he wonders about when a person becomes white. In this passage, Bob thinks about whiteness as not only the color of a person’s skin, one’s race, or one’s culture, but as a thing—a weapon, even, that can be used to oppress others or gain advantage over others in the world. As Chapters 4 to 7 progress, Bob is reminded again and again that whiteness is a commodity he does not possess. In fact, he is repeatedly reminded of his Blackness. Blackness becomes a thing too—a thing that is associated with anger. When Bob and Ella Mae talk about Alice before Bob leaves for his date, Ella Mae gets worked up about Bob’s fixation on Alice’s pale skin. When their conversation gets heated, Bob tells Ella Mae she “sounds like a Black gal” (46). This is not a compliment; Bob purposely uses Ella Mae’s Blackness as a tool to make her feel less than Alice. When Bob is leaving for his date, Ella Mae gives him a passionate kiss. Bob yells at her, and Ella Mae tells him he is just like a “n*****” (47), not knowing when to be grateful for something good. In this interaction, readers see that while whiteness manifests as power and strength, Blackness manifests as weakness, vulnerability, and anger. Bob is so enraged by some white folks’ eagerness to weaponize their whiteness that he is comforted—even, at times, delighted by—the idea of killing a white man who beat him up at the shipyard.
By the end of this section, readers are confronted with the reality of Bob’s experience. He is a man out of place, in many ways: In order to function in society, he has to try to be white, but he can never escape the color of his skin. Chapters 4 to 7 show that Bob’s relationship with race—with Blackness, with whiteness, and, most of all, with his own experience of Blackness—is complex. It is painful and difficult and, most often for Bob, impossible to fully understand.
