The story begins with the worrisome thoughts of a young woman of color living in America. Trish, the narrator, depicts a scene in the Sahara in which,

“Vultures circle around you smelling, sensing, your death. They circle lower and lower: they wait. They know. They know exactly when the flesh is ready, when the spirit can not fight back. The poor are always crossing the Sahara. And the lawyers and bondsmen and all that crowd circle around the poor, exactly like vultures. Of course, they’re not any richer than the poor, really, that’s why they’ve turned into vultures, scavengers, indecent garbage men…” (Baldwin 7)

The most direct representation of these vultures is Officer Bell. From his very first encounter with Fonny and Trish, Officer Bell seeks to destroy their lives. Plagued by toxic masculinity and white supremacy, Officer Bell succeeds in making this young couple’s life a living hell.

The story of these two young characters in love and happy really points out that just existing as a person of color in America is dangerous. They not only have to abide by the law, they have to take every single step of life carefully, ensuring they don’t do anything that can be manipulated to look like an offense of the law. Officer Bell stalks Fonny and Trish and circles them just like the vultures described at the beginning, waiting to strike when he knows they have no chance of fighting back. Vultures seem to be a symbol for the character of Officer Bell, however, Officer Bell himself seems to be a symbol for the racism, corruption and oppression plaguing the humanity of America.

Trish begins the story as if something has died in her, and as we read on we come to learn that it truly has. Trish is so young and filled with kindness, love, hope, compassion, but also, sadly, an ignorance to the realities of living in a hateful world. Trish describes this numbing feeling that comes after losing hope in humanity, “you get scared and numb, because you don’t know if you can depend on people for anything anymore.” (Baldwin 8) Later on in the novel Trish refers to America as the “kingdom of the blind” when it comes to judging beauty and states, “I don’t think America is God’s gift  to anybody–if it is, God’s days have got to be numbered. That God these people say they serve–and do serve, in ways they don’t know- has got a very nasty sense of humor.” (Baldwin 28)

Trish and Fonny have this raw and enchanted love that many people spend their lives searching for, and it is completely shattered by the corruption of American society. The humanity that is so present in these characters, throughout all of this pain is nowhere to be found in the racist institutions of America. Trish describes Fonny, “he had found his center, his own center, inside him: and it showed. He wasn’t anybody’s nigger. And that’s a crime in this fucking free country. You’re supposed to be somebody’s nigger. And if you’re nobody’s nigger, you’re a bad nigger…”(Baldwin 37). Their perspective on society exposes America for the oppressive country it is, and has always been. America has become so corrupt that a man finding his center is somehow a threat to the white-supremacist toxic masculinity that holds political power. All of this hate and violence and bloodshed, over the shade of a person’s skin.

It is not only horrifying to accept that, for racists, color determines who is more human, but even more horrifying that racists know that people do not control what color they are born, and they murder and enslave based on skin color, despite that knowledge. The racism that has always been present in American society is hateful and barbaric. Since youth we are taught to fear “anarchy” in order to distract us from the mutiny and bloodshed taking place in our own “free country”. We are not free, none of us are free. We will be in chains as long as our country continues to be run by discrimination, violence and murder. In America, the elite one percent of our country control a majority of the wealth and because of this fact they have come to believe that makes them more valuable on this earth than everybody else. No person on this earth is more valuable than anyone else. Same as no one ant or bee is more important than the other to it’s colony or hive. We are a species, we are humans. The color of someone’s skin does not change the basic fact that they are a human being. This has been proven time and time again, so why is our country still run by bigots and racists?

All of this oppression and corruption has spiraled and spread hate into people who are discriminated against everyday because of the way that they were born. Fonny’s own mother curses his unborn baby because of how dark Trish is. This emphasis on light vs. dark has expanded into this umbrella of hate, frustration and anger. It has burned down forests of happiness and love and has left our country stuck in a muck of misery.

This novel brings forth a new focus, love vs. hate. The color of someone’s skin is not a determinant of how human a person is. Light vs. dark does not define anything. Humanity is about love. Love is what makes us human. The racists, the bigots, the people who wander the streets looking for a way to ruin someone’s day, those are the true animals. The people whose hearts have rotted away from the hate, the people who seek to dominate and rule the world hoarding all the luxuries of life for themselves, those are the true monsters of American society.