Her reaction makes him think of how Alice and Benjamin, the two Black servants, must feel in the Simon home: And when he learns that Thelma’s parents were lynched and burned alive, which explains the unveiled hostility George meets in her older brother, Luther, the young marine begins to see how little he knows of life.ĭutifully, he tries to explain his confusion to Sylvia, who laughs in his face. But her moral authority prompts him to entertain an idea he’s never encountered, that his race prejudice makes him less than the man he wants to be.
(The narrative never quite explains how he gets away with disobeying a direct order.) More importantly, when he visits Thelma, he sees at once the depth and intelligence missing in his fiancée, Sylvia, a beautiful airhead who uses racial slurs as casually as “hello” or “goodbye.” George’s attraction for Thelma remains largely unconscious.
He’s to ask Eric’s widow, Thelma, who also lives there, to travel around the country, telling their story to raise war spirit among “the colored.” But no good deed goes unpunished, for when George recovers enough from his injuries to walk on crutches, he’s sent home to Mobile with a mission. Wracked by survivor’s guilt and determined to honor Eric Gordy’s heroism, George tells everyone who will listen about his savior’s courage and strength. Moreover, in the hours before a rescue team saves the small group of survivors in the sinking warship, Eric slips, falls, hits his head, and drops into the oily water, drowning before anyone can reach him. Though they’ve probably seen each other daily, George doesn’t know Eric’s name or anything else about the “messboy.” Growing up in a well-to-do Mobile, Alabama, home, George recognizes only two Black faces, both household servants.
When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, George Simon, a nineteen-year-old marine badly injured from a fall in a wounded warship, survives only because a Black messman, Eric Gordy, makes a superhuman effort to save his life. Review: The Last Thing You Surrender, by Leonard Pitts, Jr.
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