The Color Of Water Analysis

Have you ever had the feeling that you weren’t involved in something? Whether it is in friend groups or any kind of activities, we all have the need to feel accepted. Acceptance is part of our culture today. In the Color of Water we explored acceptance through the way James acted in his life, the way Ruth didn’t feel accepted, and how the book was full of racial conflicts. The book showed various ways of how the two main characters weren’t accepted into their communities. By the end of the book, both characters are more open minded and don’t really care if they are accepted or not. Throughout this book James was always pressured to be accepted. When he was young he couldn’t wrap his head around being black, but having a white mother. James’ …show more content…
James’ perspective was constantly changing throughout the book and throughout his lifetime. Ruth’s perspective also changed. Ruth was constantly faced with racial discrimination and many religious crisis. In the black community isn’t treated with respect because she is white. Some people, like her husband’s family, accepted her into marriage. Much of this book took place during the Jim Crow Laws and the civil rights movements. Blacks weren’t considered first class and they had many racial laws. The black community doesn’t understand why Ruth would want to marry a black man and raise a mixed race community. I think that the blacks were a source of pride and history for Ruth and her children, but they were also confused and traumatized. “The only white person in the room, wearing a blue print dress and holding my two-year-old daughter, Azure, in her lap” (252). I think that Ruth starts to get accepted into the community because they realize that she is not a racist, and they she is marrying black men because she loves …show more content…
Whether it was racism, religion, or other reasons. In most of the book Ruth is trying to find her true self, and that mostly means trying to figure out her religion. Ruth is in a religious crisis and she finally decides to make a change from Judaism to Christianity. James also felt this pressure to figure out his religion. “I felt like an oddball standing in front of the quiet, empty building, and looked up and down the street every couple of minutes lest the cops come by and wonder why a black man was loitering in front of a white man’s building in the middle of the day in Suffolk, Virginia” (219). James felt very outcast in his Jewish religion because he was a black in a mostly white man