Slave on the Block

A recent Black migrant from the South, Luther is the nephew of Emma (the Carraways’ deceased cook) and becomes Mattie’s boyfriend. Luther’s evolution over the course of the story reflects how the city transformed Southern migrants during the Great Migration of Black people to urban places in the Northeast. When Luther first arrives, he has been living in New Jersey and is unemployed after having refused to turn over half his pay to the man who ran the shoeshine business where he worked. Luther is struggling to adjust to life in the more racially liberal Northeast.

Luther’s evolution begins in earnest when Mattie, a sophisticated woman who has been in the city for a longer time, meets his basic needs and helps him explore the night life of Harlem. Under the influence of Mattie and the city, Luther becomes more assertive. At first, he’s passive in his responses to the overbearing Carraways. He smiles in embarrassment when Anne demands that he strip down to pose for her and then sings a song about the oppression of slavery when Anne demands that he pose. Luther’s transformation asserts itself when he calls the elder Mrs. Carraway a leach and asks when she will be leaving after she reprimands him for addressing her and entering the room without a shirt.

In the South, such actions could and did end with mobs composed mostly of white men lynching Black people, also mostly men, well into the 20th century. Luther’s defiance of the Carraways and departure from their house shows that he has abandoned his deference to white people. This shift in his identity and relation to white people reflects the period’s larger cultural trends.

Michael Carraway is Anne’s husband and Mrs. Carraway’s son. Michel is a pianist and, like Anne, sees his Black employees and their culture as something to consume. Unlike Anne, Michael quickly grows weary of accommodating Luther and Mattie’s lack of deference. He sides with his mother when the elder Mrs. Carraway demands that he eject Luther for speaking disrespectfully to her. Michael’s more rapid reverting to an explicit stance of white privilege and superiority over Black people may reflect how affluent white men are at the top of white supremacist hierarchies. 

Mattie is a 40-year-old Black woman and domestic worker in the Carraway household. From the start, she’s unhappy with the Carraways’ boundary violations and asserts the right to her own life and experiences by spending her evenings dancing and socializing in Harlem. Mattie first exhibits more passive rebellion like staying out all night.

After starting a romantic relationship with Luther, Mattie begins to overtly reject the patronizing and overcontrolling Carraways by complaining about them to Luther and openly sleeping with him. Her rejection of the Carraways’ paternalism comes to a vivid culmination when she shouts them after Michael fires Luther. She demands that they pay her and Luther for the use of their time. Mattie’s early recognition that the Carraways are objectifying her and Luther shows that the more liberal racial norms of the city and the North have shaped her identity.

Mrs. Carraway is a flat and static character who symbolizes old American racial norms. She treats Mattie and Luther with contempt and feels her sense of self as a white woman so threatened by Luther’s bare chest and disrespect that she screams when this spectacle confronts her. The elder Mrs. Carraway’s rigid ideas about race are the more overt form of racism that her son and daughter-in-law eventually endorse through their actions.