The Bridegroom

The Bridegroom is the story of a white man who is the supervisor of a "road gang" and he is spending the evening observing his workers and their interactions and also day dreaming about his pending marriage to a young girl. I found it interesting that this man seemed to have, quite literally, fallen in love with a picture of this girl. The photograph of the seventeen year old fiance was referred to numerous times within the story and this reference made it clear to me that while these two people were engaged, they seem to barely know each other. This man also clearly looks down upon his workers, although he seems quite interested in their musical revelry, who are all black. He is also, clearly a man with strong prejudices towards his workers as the author states in the story, "He thought for a moment that he would give them the rest of the bottle of brandy. Hell, no, man, it was mad. If they got the taste for the stuff, they'd be pinching it all the time." Furthermore, this story also did a pretty good job of painting a picture of what life was like at this time for workers in Africa. The white man was given a job as a supervisor, while all of the African Americans were workers for him. The "boss" even had a servant who cooked and cleaned for him, and he seemed to treat this man with heavy condescension.