The House Behind the Cedars

“But the tall tower, with its four-faced clock, rose as majestically and uncompromisingly as though the land had never been subjugated. Was it so irreconcilable, Warwick wondered, as still to peal out the curfew bell, which at nine o’clock at night had clamorously warned all negroes, slave or free, that is was unlawful for them to be abroad after that hour, under penalty of imprisonment or whipping?”

As John walks through Patesville after his return, he passes many scenes of former racial violence and, given his memories of this violence, is amazed to see a black policeman. The social change is undercut by the lingering threat of white supremacist violence. The Civil War is over, but it seems to John that the old curfew bell may still ring out.

“He did not speak to her, however, or give her any sign of recognition.”

John’s ability to psychologically separate himself completely from his origins is quickly established. He is determined to avoid being identified and will not risk it to greet someone who he remembers fondly from his childhood.

“As Warwick was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, he could not foresee that, thirty years later, even this would seem an excessive punishment for so slight a misdemeanor.”

In this period, immediately following the war, black people experienced an unprecedented increase in political and economic rights. To many at the time, it seemed that white supremacy and the South’s racial caste system was mortally wounded, but Chesnutt foreshadows the failure of Reconstruction and the emergence of a new brutal system of segregation: Jim Crow.