Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Traveling on the ship, the narrator continued to feel guilty for the widow’s death and refused to read the newspapers—he did see her picture in one, but it “did not in the least resemble her.” After a few days, he worked up the energy to look at a beautiful, glimmering iceberg, but was dismayed that, contrary to his schoolbooks, there was no polar bear on it.

The narrator “was able to shake off [his] gloom” only when they pulled into Havre. He was enchanted with “the strange sights, the chatter in an unfamiliar tongue and the excitement of landing and passing the customs officials.” The “extremely funny,” miniscule train proved remarkably fast, and the scenery was incredible; he found an unending love for France before reaching Paris by afternoon—which only compounded his reverence. They had dinner, went to a theater, and visited a café, where they joined “several hundred people, men and women, in the place drinking, talking, and listening to the music.”

A few women joined them—they chatted (although the narrator only in his broken high school French). The next day, they went shopping—the millionaire bought the narrator extravagant clothes, treating him “as an equal, not as a servant” and paying him extremely well even though he had practically no duties. For the next “fourteen or fifteen months,” besides a few side trips, they spent their days sightseeing and their nights in theaters and cafes, or hosting parties at the apartment the millionaire rented. The narrator continued to play the piano, both for the parties and the millionaire, “this man of the world, who grew weary of everything” but his music. In fact, he would sometimes wake the narrator in the middle of the night to play—which was his “only hardship” the whole trip.”

When he did not know the millionaire’s whereabouts, the narrator spent his days wandering around and his nights taking language lessons—he would buy beer and cigarettes for some young women who would teach him in return, and he gained “more than an ordinary command of French” by the time he left. Realizing that his language skills could offer him “an added accomplishment” to his music, he started reading Spanish newspapers and memorizing French words and conjugations. Soon, he could just learn by talking, which he notes is rare among classroom students. This was because he focused on a small but practical vocabulary—soon, he had successfully done the same with German.

One night, watching Faust at the Grand Opera, the narrator became enamored with an English-speaking girl sitting next to him, presumably on her first trip to Paris with her parents. And, next to her, the man she addressed as her father was—“unmistakably, my father! looking hardly a day older than when I had seen him some ten years before.” The girl was his sister—he felt all the love he had lost since his mother died, and during the second act “the desolate loneliness of [his] position became clear,” for he absolutely “could not speak.” Feeling that he might yell out in the middle of the opera, he finally “stumbled out of the theater” and “for one of the very few times in my life drank myself into a stupor.”

Eventually, the narrator’s “benefactor,” the millionaire, declared that they were leaving Paris. The narrator notes that he must have enjoyed it because he was American, for “Americans are immensely popular in Paris, much more so than in London.” The one embarrassing moment was when a friend asked, “Did they really burn a man alive in the United States?” and the narrator had no idea what to say.

Soon, the narrator was in London, which was “as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make,” although it soon turned impressive, in the same way as “a great mountain or a mighty river,” an authentic beauty unlike Paris’s, which was “hand-made, artificial.” He sees the difference between Paris and London as reflecting “a certain racial difference” between their people: French aesthetic values and morality; British utilitarianism and hypocrisy. The French own up to their vices, as when they drink moderately in the open air; the British hide them away, drinking as much as possible in cramped, smoky rooms. The most interesting thing in London was people’s insistence on saying “thank you,” even when it seemed meaningless—he wondered how the English could “accuse Americans of corrupting the language.”

Soon, they went to Amsterdam—the canals were surprising—and Berlin—which was certainly better than London and “in some things” even better than Paris: namely, the music. One night, at a party full of remarkable musicians, the narrator was supposed to impress them with a ragtime tune—after he left the piano, one of the other guests took over and played a series of classical variations on his ragtime song. “Amazed,” the narrator realized that “it can be done, why can’t I do it?” and decided to go through “carrying out the ambition I had formed as a boy.” He realized he was wasting his gifts and determined “to go back into the very heart of the South, to live among the people, and drink in my inspiration first-hand”—not only ragtime, “but also the old slave songs—material which no one had yet touched.”

As he increasingly yearned to go back to the United States, the narrator realized he needed to leave his millionaire, whom he loved dearly—but who was clearly only using him to occupy “all in life that he dreaded—Time.” One day, when the “millionaire” declared they would go to Egypt and Japan, the narrator mustered, “I don’t think I want to go” and explained his reasoning. The millionaire grew “a curious, almost cynical, smile” and remarked that “you are by blood, by appearance, by education and by tastes, a white man.” Why, he asked, would the narrator “throw [his] life away” by returning to the world of black America, when he could pursue the “universal art” of music “right here in Europe?”

This was the first time that the millionaire had ever mentioned race—it turned out that “he was a man entirely free from prejudice, but he recognized that prejudice was a big stubborn entity which had to be taken into account.” There was no reason for the narrator to return to the United States, the millionaire continued, for “I can imagine no more dissatisfied human being than an educated, cultured and refined colored man in the United States.”

Neither of them, the millionaire believed, could do anything about “their wrongs,” so the narrator “would be foolish to unnecessarily take their wrongs on your shoulders.” He says that evil is indissoluble: slavery turned into the Civil War, which turned into animosity and Jim Crow. “Modern civilization” has turned the poor anarchist, socialist, and resentful instead of ignorant; “modern philanthropy” has made the miserable only suffer longer. He concluded that “my philosophy of life is this: make yourself as happy as possible, and try to make those happy whose lives come into touch with yours; but to attempt to right the wrongs and ease the sufferings of the world in general, is a waste of effort.”

The narrator was surprised and felt paralyzed, seeing the sense in the millionaire’s argument “in spite of the absolute selfishness upon which it was based.” He wondered whether he wanted to help his people or simply distinguish himself before the world—he has “never definitely answered” this question. For weeks, he was tortured by his dilemma, but ultimately he decided that perhaps music was the best way to be selfish, and he might even become famous precisely for being a black composer. Of course, he secretly wanted “to voice all the joys and sorrows, the hopes and ambitions, of the American Negro, in classic musical form.” He told the millionaire, who gave him a 500-dollar check and sent him on his way “almost coldly,” and just like that he lost his “best friend” and “greatest influence” ever, besides his mother. He set out for Liverpool and then for Boston.