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59 pages 1 hour read

Paul Beatty

The Sellout

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2015

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Symbols & Motifs

Racist Signs and Imagery

Me’s work, which he undertakes at times deliberately and at times by accident, is to make visible the ongoing racism that has been rendered invisible by a false social progress. After Me segregates Dickens, the community improves. This improvement does not imply that segregation in itself is a good thing. Dickens has always been segregated, just as it’s always been deprived of investment and resources. The difference is that now, that systemic injustice has a visible cause, and as such it brings the community together, as Marpessa says, serving as a source of solidarity. As Me segregates Marpessa’s bus first, the progress begins there. Speaking on Marpessa’s behalf, Charisma notices people,

[s]aying hello when they got on, thank you when they got off. There’s no gang fighting. Crip, Blood, or cholo, they press the Stop Request button one time and one fucking time only. You know where the kids go do their homework? Not home, not the library, but the bus. That’s how safe it is (147).

The racist signs bring civility and safety to the bus, and, once Me installs the fake white school across from Chaff Middle School, the segregation puts Chaff on a path to becoming “the fourth-highest-ranked public school in the county within the next year” (232). The racist policies then bring peace to the gangs. On Hood day, Me notices “[gang and family members of all colors and stripes” hanging out together in the home team dugout (215). Racism creates a communal atmosphere in Dickens—by pointing to the emptiness of the last several decades of social progress, it makes real progress possible.

Me’s signs aren’t real. No legal authority lies behind the segregated bus, and no all-white Wheaton school is being built. Hominy chooses to become enslaved by Me and then chooses to free himself. This racism is performance. Like many forms of performance, it offers catharsis, bringing to light forces that have been buried in the social fabric or in the individual psyche, invisible and nameless but no less powerful.

Dickens Symbolizes Community and Identity

Dickens symbolizes community and identity. When gentrification leads to Dickens’s unremarkable disappearance, Hominy explicitly loses his identity. He tells Me, “[W]hen Dickens disappeared, I disappeared” (72). Hominy’s identity links to his community. Without the latter, he lacks the former.

To be accurate, Dickens, the land, didn’t go away, but the signs that mark Dickens vanished. As a symbol of community and identity, Paul Beatty uses Dickens to demonstrate the importance of boundaries. Like people, towns need limits and edges. They have to be aware of where they end and others begin. By painting lines and adding signs, Me restores the boundaries of Dickens. The segregation adds additional boundaries that improve life in Dickens and further its symbolism as a source of community and identity, not just for Hominy, but for Marpessa, King Cuz, and Me.

While Me may not have a stable identity, he has a firm community, and that community is a key part of his personal identity. When the TV weather person provides the weather for Dickens, Me has an intense emotional reaction. He admits, “I can’t stop crying. Dickens is back on the map” (261). Dickens gives Me a purpose. He identifies with the people of Dickens not because he’s Black and they’re Black but because they make up his world. They’re a part of his identity, and he’s a part of their identity. Conversely, Foy reveals his lack of community by gainsaying Me’s plan to restore Dickens. After his presentation, he asks him, “Why?” (93).

Comedy

Comedy is not for the faint of heart. It’s a bellicose, intense enterprise. As Me says, “Comedy is war. When a comedian’s routine works, they’ve killed; if the bits fall flat, they refer to it as dying” (186). Me uses figurative language. Comedians don’t literarily kill people with their jokes, nor do they die if people don’t laugh at their jokes. The hyperbolic and symbolic language conveys the weight Beatty attaches to humor—it can wreck people’s presumptions and crush beliefs about themselves and their worlds.

About a talented Black comedian at the Dum Dum Donut open mic, Me says, “[He] did more than tell jokes; he plucked out your subconscious and beat you silly with it, not until you were unrecognizable, but until you were recognizable” (263). Humor can make people think differently and transform them into someone they didn’t think they were. Humor is also inclusive. The talented Black comedian tells the white couple, “[G]et the fuck out! This is our thing!” Me doesn’t agree. He wishes he would have asked the Black comedian, “So what exactly is our thing?” (264).

The motif of humor helps the reader understand how Beatty uses humor in his book. He has a no-holds-barred approach: No one and nothing is off limits. The point isn’t to hurt people or to make them feel left out, but it’s to free them from prior restrictions and spotlight the strangeness and possibilities of the world. Through Me, Beatty confronts the reader with a helter-skelter world that upsets many of the contemporary norms that organize society and personal identity.

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