Previous
Allusions
Key Examples in If Beale Street Could Talk
Troubled About My Soul
Explanation and Analysis—How Did You Feel:
On their "first date," Tish and Fonny go to church with Fonny's family. The congregation worships raucously, singing and shouting. While telling the story of this "first date" in a flashback, Tish recalls what was to become of Rose, one of the congregants:
[...] The moment he sat down, another sister, her name was Rose and not much later she was going to disappear from the church and have a baby—and I still remember the last time I saw her, when I was about fourteen, walking the streets in the snow with her face all marked and her hands all swollen and a rag around her head and her stockings falling down, singing to herself—stoop up and started singing, How did you feel when you come out of the wilderness, leaning on the Lord?
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—The Music Is––"Live":
Late in the novel, in Puerto Rico, Sharon searches for Victoria Rogers in order to convince her to recant her accusation that Fonny raped her. When Sharon arrives on the island, she goes to a nightclub, where Pietro, Rogers's husband, works. When she arrives, Sharon has a flashback to her young adulthood, as a singer in Birmingham:
Unlock with LitCharts A+This is a nightclub, and so the music is—"live." Sharon's days with the drummer come back to her. Her days as a singer come back to her. They do not, as she is to make very vivid to me, much later, come back with the rind of regret. She and the drummer lost each other—that was that; she was not equipped to be a singer, and that was that.
Related Themes:
