Such discovery and affirmation, however, must be personal and individual, as the residents of the Bottom also come to know. Waiting for the larger white society to provide validation through jobs, social status, or recognition only leads to self-destruction. Scores of people who die on Shadrack’s National Suicide Day at the site of the Bottom’s hope for a better life, the New River Road tunnel, demonstrate the futility of social redemption. Only the personal is possible.