The Sellout

by

Paul Beatty

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

Marpessa Delissa Dawson Character Analysis

Marpessa is the narrator’s childhood sweetheart and on/off girlfriend. She grew up in Dickens and, like the narrator, enjoyed going to Hominy’s house to watch Little Rascals movies as a child. She is three years older than the narrator, and when she begins to date boys as a teenager, the two lose touch. She marries MC Panache and has a baby when she is still young, which helps propel her into her career as a bus driver. The narrator involves Marpessa in his plan to give Hominy “racism” for his birthday by getting her to put up a sign on her bus asking passengers to give up their seats for white people. During this project and the ensuing re-segregation of Dickens, Marpessa decides to get back together with the narrator. The end of the novel sees them happily reunited.

Marpessa Delissa Dawson Quotes in The Sellout

The The Sellout quotes below are all either spoken by Marpessa Delissa Dawson or refer to Marpessa Delissa Dawson. 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:
Progress vs. Regress Theme Icon
).
Chapter 17 Quotes

I'm frigid. Not in the sense that I don't have any sexual desire, but in the obnoxious way men in the free-love seventies projected their own sexual inadequacies onto women by referring to them as "frigid" and "dead fish." I'm the deadest of fish. I fuck like an overturned guppy. A plate of day-old sashimi has more "motion of the ocean" than I do. So on the day of the shooting and drive-by orange-ing, when Marpessa stuck a tongue suspiciously tangy with satsuma tartness into my mouth and ground her pudenda into my

pelvic bone, I lay there on my bed—motionless.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Marpessa Delissa Dawson
Related Symbols: Satsumas
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
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The Sellout PDF

Marpessa Delissa Dawson Quotes in The Sellout

The The Sellout quotes below are all either spoken by Marpessa Delissa Dawson or refer to Marpessa Delissa Dawson. 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:
Progress vs. Regress Theme Icon
).
Chapter 17 Quotes

I'm frigid. Not in the sense that I don't have any sexual desire, but in the obnoxious way men in the free-love seventies projected their own sexual inadequacies onto women by referring to them as "frigid" and "dead fish." I'm the deadest of fish. I fuck like an overturned guppy. A plate of day-old sashimi has more "motion of the ocean" than I do. So on the day of the shooting and drive-by orange-ing, when Marpessa stuck a tongue suspiciously tangy with satsuma tartness into my mouth and ground her pudenda into my

pelvic bone, I lay there on my bed—motionless.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Marpessa Delissa Dawson
Related Symbols: Satsumas
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis: