Like a Winding Sheet

“Why it’s Friday the thirteenth.”

This quote, also spoken by Mae, contains foreshadowing and an ironic prediction of potentially negative things to come. It points to Mae’s docile, careful nature, which is in direct contrast to Johnson’s unpredictable, impulsive nature that is exposed as the story goes on. Though Mae is the one concerned about Friday the 13th and Johnson isn’t fearful, Johnson then has a particularly bad day that culminates in domestic violence toward Mae, his wife whom he loves and cares for.

“But he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her roughly or threaten to strike her like a lot of men might have done. He wasn’t made that way.”

This is the first instance in which the reader becomes aware of Johnson’s perception of himself. Johnson believes that he is, fundamentally, a nonviolent man, and this self-perception contributes to his intentions throughout the story. This quote sets Johnson’s intentions, and it also contributes irony to the story once his underlying violent thoughts and behaviors are revealed.

“He pushed the cart toward the foreman. He could never remember to refer to her as the forelady even in his mind. It was funny to have a woman for a boss in a plant like this one.”

Here, Johnson’s attitudes toward women become central to the story. Although Johnson isn’t expressing negative or violent thoughts toward Mrs. Scott yet, this quote introduces a key theme in the story—that of Gendered Violence and gender dynamics. It reflects the unusual power dynamic of a woman being Johnson’s boss, and how that dynamic is further complicated when his boss’s racism is revealed through her speech.

“I don’t care what’s wrong with your legs. You get in here on time. I’m sick of you n---.”

Johnson’s boss uses a racist slur against him and other African American workers more generally. This is the first explicit instance of racism within the story, and it articulates the prejudiced society that Johnson must navigate each day. Mrs. Scott’s use of the racist slur in this instance is also a turning point for Johnson’s anger, as it is the first instance that elevates his emotional status from fatigued and unhappy to furious and violent.

“He stood motionless for a moment and then turned away from the red lipstick on her mouth that made him remember that the foreman was a woman. And he couldn’t bring himself to hit a woman.”

Here, the image of red lipstick appears for the first time. This establishes a motif that associates red lips with womanhood and femininity throughout the story. It is a physical characteristic that Johnson fixates on when he begins to imagine violently beating Mrs. Scott and the girl serving coffee; eventually, this image actualizes itself when he actually does strike Mae’s face and notices the smear of her red lipstick.

“He tried to make his hands relax by offering them a description of what it would have been like to strike her because he had the queer feeling that his hands were not exactly a part of him anymore—they had developed a separate life of their own over which he had no control.”

The motif in this quote is key to the dissonance between Johnson’s intentions and his emotions. Although Johnson perceives himself as a nonviolent man, his hands seem to have a life of their own. His hands represent his underlying, violent nature that slowly gains power, and eventually dominance, as the story progresses.

“He watched them walk to the porcelain topped tables carrying steaming cups of coffee and he saw that just the smell of the coffee lessened the fatigue lines in their faces. After the first sip their faces softened, they smiled, they began to talk and laugh.”

Johnson’s desire for coffee in this scene represents a juxtaposition from his otherwise grueling daily life. Johnson must navigate physical pain and emotional and verbal abuse at work, but when he sees the cups of coffee in the restaurant, they are a beacon of happiness and light on an otherwise difficult night. He deeply craves the cup of coffee and what he believes it might bring—happiness, an end to his fatigue, laughter. The coffee will eventually become a tool that serves to grow Johnson’s anger and dissolution with everyday life, when he is unable to purchase a cup because the restaurant runs out.

“The girl looked past him, put her hands up to her head and gently lifted her hair away from the back of her neck, tossing her head back a little. ‘No more coffee for awhile,’ she said.”

Like the red lipstick, hair is a feature that Johnson begins to bitterly associate with femininity and womanhood. To him, the girl’s callousness as she disregards him with a toss of her hair is rooted in racism; her overt lack of disregard is enhanced when she seems not even to see him as a person and instead looks past him. This interaction represents how Johnson is viewed as lesser-than by society as a whole, due to his race. It also foreshadows the frustration he will feel later, when Mae similarly tosses her hair back over her neck.

“He felt his hands begin to tingle and the tingling went all the way down to his finger tips so that he glanced down at them. They were clenched tight, hard, into fists. Then he looked at the girl again. What he wanted to do was hit her so hard that the scarlet lipstick on her mouth would smear and spread over her nose, her chin, and out toward her cheeks; so hard that she would never toss her head again and refuse a man a cup of coffee because he was black.”

Throughout the story, Johnson’s hands take on a life of their own. They tingle and clench when he wants to hurt someone, and this physical change represents the violent urges that Johnson attempts to suppress.

“The roar of the train beat inside his head, making it ache and throb, and the pain in his legs clawed up into his groin so that he seemed to be bursting with pain and he told himself that it was due to all that anger-born energy that had piled up in him and not been used and so it had spread through him like a poison—from his feet and legs all the way up to his head.”

In this key sentence, Johnson’s anger builds to an almost unmanageable peak. This is an example of Petry’s varying sentence structure, as the length and momentum of the sentence imitate the rising momentum of Johnson’s fury. The sentence feels stretched and continuous, combining multiple clauses and phrases, which evokes a hurried tone. As his anger rises quickly, it reaches an uncontrollable peak—which is reflected in the out-of-control speed and length of this long sentence.

“He winced away from the gesture. ‘Why you got to be always fooling with your hair for?’ he protested.”

When Johnson is repulsed by this behavior, it recalls the previous instance in which the girl serving coffee also “fooled” with her hair. Johnson’s reaction in this quote shows how quickly his anger is displaced. Mae’s movements remind him of the girl in the restaurant’s movements, and the girl in the restaurant reminds Johnson of perceived racism. Although Mae isn’t doing anything at all wrong, Johnson subconsciously associates her with instances and situations which have angered him previously.

“He didn’t move. He was too tired and his legs were throbbing now that he had sat down. Besides the overalls were already wrinkled and dirty, he thought. They couldn’t help but be for she’d worn them all week.”

When Johnson arrives home, he must again deal with pain in his legs, which is a symbol of the harsh socioeconomic system with which he must contend. However, he blames his anger on Mae’s behavior, despite her kindness and gentleness. He fixates on the state of her overalls, which he in turn correlates with his fatigue and his pain. In this way, he sees Mae as an outlet for pain and struggle and uses her as a means to release tension and anger.

“He didn’t let her finish what he was saying. She was standing close to him and that funny tingling started in his finger tips, went fast up his arms and sent his fist shooting straight for her face.”

In this quote, Mae is silenced by Johnson’s act of violence. Throughout the story, the narrative closeness to Johnson—and the lack of perspective from Mae—has acted as a subliminal silence of the female point of view. In this quote, that silencing is made more explicit when Mae is literally cut off from speech as Johnson strikes her in the face.