So What Are You, Anyway?

The doll that Carole carries is a physical representation of her youth and innocence, while the way that Henry Norton treats the doll directly contributes to the author’s explorations of both the Loss of Innocence and Prejudice as an Attack on Identity and Belonging. When Henry first enters the narrative stage, the narrator depicts him “holding [Carole’s] doll upside down” (Paragraph 2). He is mistreating the doll, and by extension Carole. His rough handling of the doll foreshadows the cruelty with which he will treat Carole.

Throughout Carole’s flight, she attempts to keep track of and care for the doll in the same way she is attempting to care for and protect herself. Even when Carole goes to the restroom, she takes the doll with her. In this way, the author is symbolically conveying Carole’s unconscious desperation to safeguard her own innocence and purity.

The doll’s appearance further underscores Hill’s examinations of Prejudice as an Attack on Identity and Belonging. The doll is Black, and Henry attacks the doll’s perceived race before attacking Carole’s racial identity: “That’s a Negro doll. That’s race. Negro” (Paragraph 52). The doll belongs to Carole and is a literal representation of a child, so it symbolizes Carole’s powerlessness.