The fairy tale beginning of this chapter, including references to "Hansel and Gretel" and "There Was An Old Woman," emphasizes the illusory world in which Milkman still lives. Completely caught up in finding Pilate's gold, he is "oblivious" to the "wood life" through which he struggles. Only during the airplane ride to Pittsburgh has Milkman ever felt a "feeling of invulnerability." Morrison comments about him, "In the air, away from real life, he felt free."
The episode between Milkman and Guitar prior to Milkman's leaving for Danville highlights once again the racism faced by blacks — especially black men — in a white-dominated society. Remarking on the herculean demands placed on black men, including those by black women, Guitar explains to his friend how "they" — white men and women, and black women — "want your living life." His comment "What good is a man's life if he can't even choose what to die for?" sheds light on how and why Guitar became a militant member of the Seven Days: When his father was literally split in half working at a sawmill, the white sawmill owner gave Guitar's mother only forty dollars as compensation for her husband's life. In other words, to the owner, a black man's life is worth only forty dollars.
Milkman's subsequent encounters with Reverend Cooper and Circe also mark a major turning point in his personal development. Like the biblical Prodigal Son, who is welcomed back by his father after squandering his inheritance (Luke 15), Milkman is welcomed by his father's "people." His return "home" symbolizes the Northern Negro's return to what author James Baldwin, in Nobody Knows My Name, calls "the Old Country," a place that Milkman has "never seen, but which [he] cannot fail to recognize."
