The opening paragraph of this chapter universalizes Milkman's personal history and explains his yearning to escape — at least temporarily — the demands placed on him by his family and friends. Of the many reasons Morrison suggests for why people leave home and strike out on their own, one — "a wish to hear the solid click of a door closing behind their backs" — is Milkman's.
Macon's pleading with Milkman to stay and continue to work in the family business is based on money. He tells his son, "You'll own it all. All of it. You'll be free. Money is freedom, Macon [Jr.]." Note that later in the chapter, when young Macon sees the old man's bags of gold nuggets, he characterizes their sparkling colors as representing monetary security. By associating "Life, safety, and luxury" with the vain, ostentatiously bejeweled "tail-spread of a [male] peacock," Macon acknowledges the consuming greed that will envelop his adult life.
As Macon tells Milkman the story of his and Pilate's escape from Montour County, he reveals both his hatred for Pilate and his insatiable greed for the gold she took. Not satisfied with Ruth's inheritance from her father, Macon also wants his sister's gold. Afraid to confront Pilate directly, he convinces Milkman to do his dirty work for him: Macon is not only a coward but a cold and calculating man who has no qualms about pitting his own family members against each other to satisfy his greed.
Macon's story also reveals his attitude toward the supernatural. Although he admits that he and Pilate were initially afraid of the "man who looked like their father," he refers to his father's ghost as a physical presence. In doing so, he unknowingly connects himself to his African ancestors, who believed that ghosts often walked the earth and accepted these spirits as a natural part of their world.
