"He wondered if God looked like that.  No.  God was a nice old white man, with long white hair, flowing white beard, and little blue eyes that looked sad when people died and mean when they were bad.  It must be the devil who looks like that--holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so niggers could eat the sweet, warm insides.  If the devil did look like that, Cholly preferred him" (134).

I thought this passage was haunting and foreboding about Cholly.  But more importantly, it brings up the issue of, "What does God really look like?"  Again, it's interesting how self-loathing Cholly's internal narration as he talks about the devil "holding the world in his hands, ready to dash it to the ground and spill the red guts so niggers could eat the sweet, warm insides."  That sentence makes it sound like African-Americans are animals or even demons.  I for one don't like to ascribe a human form to God; I like to think of him as being an omnipotent energy that surrounds us.

I also see God whenever I witness a beautiful piece of scenery or landscape.  For some reason, this image of Hallstatt, Austria resonates deeply with me.

"Cholly, moving faster, looked at Darlene. He hated her. He almost wished he could do it--hard, long, and painfully, he hated her so much" (148).

This was some of the most painful literature I've read in a while, and it really shocks me and makes me feel awful that something like this could happen not one hundred years ago.  Sex should be beautiful, but it's scary how Cholly channels his hatred for the two white men watching Darlene and him into hatred for Darlene mid-coitus.

"But Fuller had turned back to the game that was about to begin anew.  He bent down to toss a bill on the ground, and waited for a throw.  When it was gone, he stood up and in a vexed and whiny voice shouted at Cholly, "Tell that bitch she get her money.  Now, get the fuck outta my face" (156).

I can't imagine what it would be like to go out looking for my father, only to have him say something like this to me.  Cholly's younger days were incredibly rough.

"Only a musician would sense, know, without even knowing that he knew, that Cholly was free. Dangerously free.  Free to feel whatever he felt--fear, guilt, shame, love, grief, pity" (159).

Music has a way of moving people emotionally, so I really like how Morrison says that only a musician could describe Cholly's life. Words aren't powerful enough to convey the emotional gravity of everything that he's experienced.

"Only a musician would sense, know...."

"Once a friend came to visit and said, looking out on the soothing view: 'And it would  have to be a white horse; the very image of freedom.' And I thought, yes, the animals are forced to become for us merely 'images' of what they once so beautifully expressed" (464).

It was interesting to me to find some correlation between "white" and "beauty" in an essay suffering... Just some food for thought.