Dunbar’s novel focuses on the plight of Berry Hamilton, a butler for the wealthy Oakley family who is falsely accused and convicted of theft. The primary concerns of the text are how lies combined with racial prejudice can destroy not only an individual’s life, but his entire family’s.

With that in mind, the most important quotations from the text deal with why these lies were successful and why they were so destructive.

The following quotation comes from the beginning of chapter 5, “The Justice of Men.” The previous chapter ended with Berry’s arrest for the theft of money from Oakley’s safe, despite a lack of evidence and Berry’s proclamation of innocence. At the beginning of this chapter, the narrator of the story interjects personal opinion on Berry’s arrest and the townspeople’s opinion of it:

It seems a strange irony upon the forces of right living, that this man, who had never been arrested before, who had never even been suspected of wrong-doing, should find so few who even at the first telling doubted the story of his guilt.

This quotation implicates not only Oakley, but also the townspeople at large for causing Berry’s arrest. Berry is described as respected and well-known within his town among Black people and white people alike. Despite his favorable reputation, Berry’s race creates an automatic presumption of guilt among those in power. This quotation underscores the injustices at work that led to Berry’s arrest, which would prove to devastate his family as well.

After Berry is sentenced to ten years hard labor, his wife and two children are forced out of their cottage on the Oakley property. Thinking her family will have better prospects, Fannie Hamilton sets off for New York. However, her son Joe soon begins hanging around with unsavory characters and becomes an alcoholic. When Joe tries to involve his sister Kit in the same kind of lifestyle, Fannie Hamilton begs her daughter:

Well, ef you have to, I’d ruther see you daid any day. Oh, Kit, my little gal, don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t ya go down lak yo’ brothah Joe. Joe’s gone.

In this excerpted dialogue, Fannie asks Kit to reject the offer of employment that Hattie—the cabaret singer that Joe met at the Banner Club—gave Kit to be a singer. Fannie is disgusted with what she perceives as immoral—and therefore degrading—work. This quotation conveys her desperation to protect her children from moral degradation, which she believes she has already failed to achieve with Joe. Fannie sees Kit as her last hope for the future, so she explicitly asks her daughter not to do the same. This quotation also shows how the Hamilton family has changed. Earlier in the novel, the Hamiltons were a respected and stable nuclear family. Now, Fannie sees her children slipping into debauched lifestyles and struggling financially.

By the novel’s end, Joe is in prison after murdering Hattie, and Fannie is about to marry a man she does not love just to obtain financial security. A series of serendipitous events lead to Berry’s early release after a news reporter finds evidence that Oakley’s own brother stole the money, while Fannie’s rich suitor is killed accidentally. Berry, Fannie, and Kit end up back in their old cottage at the Oakleys’, which is described in the final sentence of the text:

It was not a happy life, but it was all that was left to them, and they took it up without complaint, for they knew they were powerless.

This final quotation summarizes the central theme of the novel, which relates to how people like the Hamiltons are at the mercy of the world in which they live. This occurs because of the inherent inequalities and prejudices within American society, which is ruled by white supremacy. Dunbar allows his once wholesome family to achieve its happy ending of sorts, yet he chooses to temper enthusiasm about this ending, mirroring the reality for many Black American families at the time.