Baldwin demonstrates this effect of racism in each of his major characters. Consider, for example, Florence's aversion to blackness; she uses skin whiteners (symbolic of self hatred), and she dislikes "common niggers," a symptom of a racist cataloguing within the race. Or consider the sadly casual explanation of how Rachel (Florence and Gabriel's mother) had lost her other children: " . . . all of whom had been taken from her, one by sickness, two by auction; and one, whom she had not been allowed to call her own, had been raised in the master's house."
In the two main characters, John and Gabriel, however, Baldwin shows the effects of racism most vividly. John is the central character in the main plot (the boy maturing physically and religiously); Gabriel figures most prominently in its major theme (the tragic effects of racism on a people and a society). Each is the product of his environment, and each reflects the debilitating nature and consequences of the racism in his environment.
The views of John and Gabriel regarding racism are polar opposites. John is still a child, naïve and inexperienced; Gabriel has suffered the realities of his subordinate position in a racist society; he is embittered, hardened, and defeated. While John recalls the kindness of a concerned teacher when he was sick, Gabriel can think only of injustices that African Americans endured where he grew up and where he lives.
Gabriel proclaims whites to be wicked and untrustworthy, warning John that, when he is older, he will find out for himself how evil they really are. John has read about racism and the injustices and tortures that blacks had endured in the South, but he has experienced none of these things himself. Because John has had no overt, negative experiences with whites, "it was hard for him to think of them burning in hell forever," as Gabriel promises they will.
