Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sellout, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Progress vs. Regress
Blackness, Origins, and Home
Stereotypes and Absurdity
Criminality, Authority, and the Law
Gender, Sex, and Hypersexualization
Summary
Analysis
Later that day, Foy Cheshire arrives to take photographs of the Wheaton Academy. He asks the narrator who is responsible for the school, claiming that “only the forces of evil would stick an all-white school in the middle of the ghetto.” He believes it is the work of a CIA conspiracy against him or an HBO documentary about him. Someone throws a satsuma at Foy’s head, and when the narrator goes to help him, Foy pushes him away. Foy stands up, puts on sunglasses and declares: “I shall return, motherfucker!”
Now that the tide has turned against him, the reader might be inclined to feel sympathy for Foy. Indeed, the narrator appears moved by this sympathy, which is why he offers to help Foy. Foy’s rejection of this help shows that his ego trumps any other consideration. It is even suggested that he only cares about the re-segregation plans because he thinks they are part of a conspiracy against him.
Themes
