Big Black Good Man

In this story, the author seems as if he is portraying racism, and judgment. In the scene where the black man first comes in into Olaf Jensen’s motel, Olaf is stricken by the man’s big posture and skin complexion. As the man continues to walk up to the register where Olaf was, Olaf’s face grew with despair. He was frightened by the man, and what he can do to him. So he walked up front, with a suitcase, and asked for a room and a woman.

As much as Olaf wanted to say no, and hesitated a bit, he gave the gentleman a room, and sent him Lena, the local prostitute.

The big black man didn’t want anyone to help him up with his suitcase. As if he was carrying something that he didn’t want anyone to know about, in a suspicious way. So as the week went by, Lena kept coming every day, and the man just kept going by his business.

Until the day he left, once he left, Olaf couldn’t get the image out of his mind. He kept thinking about the big black man. He kept thinking about ways to hurt him, or confront him in some type of way, if he would’ve ever come back to the motel. He felt threatened by him, and somehow he wasn’t going to let pass.

Big Black Good Man Analysis

Each day he saw the big black man, he thought about striking him with something, or shooting him.

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Violent thoughts. Thoughts he couldn’t control. A year later had passed, and Olaf was still working at the register, then the man came back. Olaf didn’t know what to do. For so long he had thoughts of confronting the man, and here is his chance. So as the man walked up to him, Olaf stood in his stance, reaching for the gun he had on the side of the drawer next to him. The man saw he was reaching for something, and stopped his hand.

Then he reached into his suitcase, and gave him a shirt. Olaf felt relieved. He thought he had came back to kill him. The man wanted to show thanks to Olaf for everything. Ever since he left a year ago, he and Lena have been keeping in touch, and he had grown feelings for her. As he was leaving, the big black good man was calling him daddy-o and talking nice to him. My question was, why say “daddy-o, drop dead”? Why would the black man say of such thing? Did he really have some type of intention for Olaf Jensen? Why was he so secretive at first?

It’s the little things throughout the story, I found that made me question. Even Lena, why did she leave right after the big black man left? The point of the story is stereotype or not, it’s based on the language. The body language of the person, what are they hiding, what’s their story, things like that. Yes there was stereotype in the beginning with that black man, and how tall and angry looking he looked. His posture, his stanza, his skin complexion most of all. Olaf was intimidated by the man, and that’s what made him who he was in the story.

But at the end of it all, it was all about the Big Black Good Man, and his true intentions. Was he really a good man, or just making up for something, or maybe that was just covering up his true intentions. The author made this story suspenseful enough to keep us guessing. Stereotyping the story doesn’t make it better. “Big black good man” title says it all, and how a white man himself is scared of him. In a novel devoted on undermining “stereotype”, the author’s success in the story depends on recognizing what stereotype really is.