Grant’s attitude

1) A complex character. In a second part, we will study Grant's attitude in the scene. First, we can see that he is a complex character because he is blocked between two groups: he is black and he wants to be accepted by the white community. He rejects the fact to be treated as a simple black man but he isn’t considered as a white man, even if he went to the university. We can imagine that it’s only when he helps Jefferson to become a man that Grant will belong to one of those groups. We can see the character’s complexity by the dialogue between Henri Pichot and him because Grant doesn’t talk like Miss Emma and tante Lou, he speaks like a white man because of his education.

2) Grant, a susceptible and narcissistic character. Then we can assert that Grant appears as a character who takes offence very quickly because he’s hurt to have to pass by the back door and to be treated as a subhuman. We can see that he doesn’t accept to be treated like that at line 2 with “I stood back near the door” which shows us that Grant doesn’t want to enter by this door. We also see that he’s hurt when he speaks with Henri Pichot because in spite of the politeness, he is not very cooperative when HP asks him questions. Indeed, he only retorts "I have no idea sir" or "no sir". If he is so brief, it’s probably because he has the impression to waste his time and because he doesn’t really want to help Jefferson, which shows that he’s narcissist. Furthermore, those sentences prove that Grant is narcissist because his attention is more centred on the fact that he entered by the back door than by the case of jefferson which shows that he only thinks about him and that he does not really want to help Jefferson. For him, Jefferson isn’t important and he believes that it wouldn’t change anything if Jefferson felt like a human or like a hog.

3) A narrator spectator. We have here a narrator spectator: Grant is a passive character, he stays near the door because