The Other Foot

by

Ray Bradbury

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on The Other Foot makes teaching easy.

Willie Johnson Character Analysis

Willie Johnson lives on Mars with his wife, Hattie, and their three children. Their community is populated entirely by black people who fled widespread racism and cruelty on Earth twenty years prior. Willie grew up in Greenwater, Alabama, where he witnessed the horrors of slavery and racism—his father was hanged and his mother was shot by white people. When Willie learns that the white man is coming to Mars, he sees it as a chance to exact revenge and subject white people to the same inhumane treatment that black people had to endure on Earth. For much of the story, Willie is gruff and cruel. At one point, his wife tells him that he doesn’t “sound human,” underscoring the inhumanity of wanting to reestablish prejudice in their small, peaceful town. A natural leader, Willie initially uses his power to perpetuate racism and form a mob that looks to him for direction. Ultimately, with Hattie’s help, Willie is able to understand that the Earth people have suffered feelings of pain, isolation, and homelessness in the past twenty years similar to those feelings that black people felt when they were on Earth. He realizes that everyone is “even” and encourages his fellow Martians to tear down all of the segregationist signs that he had just instructed them to put up.

Willie Johnson Quotes in The Other Foot

The The Other Foot quotes below are all either spoken by Willie Johnson or refer to Willie Johnson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Revenge and Empathy Theme Icon
).
The Other Foot Quotes

I’m not feeling Christian […] I’m just feeling mean. After all them years of doing what they did to our folks—my mom and dad, and your mom and dad—You remember? You remember how they hung my father on Knockwood Hill and shot my mother? You remember? Or you got a memory that’s short like the others?

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

“Well […] the shoe’s on the other foot now. We’ll see who gets laws passed against him, who gets lynched, who rides the back of streetcars, who gets segregated in shows. We’ll just wait and see.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

Willie plunged out of the house. “You children come inside, I’m locking you up. You ain’t seeing no white man, you ain’t talking about them, you ain’t doing nothing.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), The White Man, Hattie and Willie’s Children
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

All along the road people were looking up in the sky, or climbing in their cars, or riding in cars, and guns were sticking up out of some cars like telescopes sighting all the evils of a world coming to an end.

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

The people were so close together it looked like one dark body with a thousand arms reaching out to take the weapons.

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with. It was teetering now. But which was the keystone, and how to get at it? How to touch them and get a thing started in all of them to make a ruin of their hate?

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, Hattie Johnson
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

“The Lord’s let us come through, a few here and a few there. And what happens next is up to all of us. The time for being fools is over. We got to be something else except fools. […] now the white man’s as lonely as we’ve always been. He’s got no home now, just like we didn’t have one for so long. Now everything’s even. We can start all over again, on the same level.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire The Other Foot LitChart as a printable PDF.
The Other Foot PDF

Willie Johnson Quotes in The Other Foot

The The Other Foot quotes below are all either spoken by Willie Johnson or refer to Willie Johnson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Revenge and Empathy Theme Icon
).
The Other Foot Quotes

I’m not feeling Christian […] I’m just feeling mean. After all them years of doing what they did to our folks—my mom and dad, and your mom and dad—You remember? You remember how they hung my father on Knockwood Hill and shot my mother? You remember? Or you got a memory that’s short like the others?

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

“Well […] the shoe’s on the other foot now. We’ll see who gets laws passed against him, who gets lynched, who rides the back of streetcars, who gets segregated in shows. We’ll just wait and see.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 43
Explanation and Analysis:

Willie plunged out of the house. “You children come inside, I’m locking you up. You ain’t seeing no white man, you ain’t talking about them, you ain’t doing nothing.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), The White Man, Hattie and Willie’s Children
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

All along the road people were looking up in the sky, or climbing in their cars, or riding in cars, and guns were sticking up out of some cars like telescopes sighting all the evils of a world coming to an end.

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 45
Explanation and Analysis:

The people were so close together it looked like one dark body with a thousand arms reaching out to take the weapons.

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 46
Explanation and Analysis:

She wanted to get at the hate of them all, to pry at it and work at it until she found a little chink, and then pull out a pebble or a stone or a brick and then a part of the wall, and once started, the whole edifice might roar down and be done away with. It was teetering now. But which was the keystone, and how to get at it? How to touch them and get a thing started in all of them to make a ruin of their hate?

Related Characters: Willie Johnson, Hattie Johnson
Page Number: 53
Explanation and Analysis:

“The Lord’s let us come through, a few here and a few there. And what happens next is up to all of us. The time for being fools is over. We got to be something else except fools. […] now the white man’s as lonely as we’ve always been. He’s got no home now, just like we didn’t have one for so long. Now everything’s even. We can start all over again, on the same level.”

Related Characters: Willie Johnson (speaker), Hattie Johnson, The White Man
Page Number: 56
Explanation and Analysis: