Ruth and her husband Macon (remember that Milkman's name is actually Macon as well). A key aspect of this “sex scene” is that the sex (“…he ejaculated quickly. She liked it that way. So did he.”) is not as important as the foreplay (“complicated underwear that he deliberately took a long time to undo.”). I wouldn't call this perverse, but it does give some insight into their relationship. Also, this sex scene is a memory from twenty years ago. Macon admits that “[l]ittle by little he remembered fewer and fewer of the details, until finally he had to imagine them, even fabricate them, guess what they must have been” which might be something we should discuss later when Macon explains to Milkman why he hates Ruth. The sex-specifically the foreplay-is what Macon remembers because it becomes the “nourishment of his outrage.” Sheehy
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Ruth and her husband Macon (remember that Milkman's name is actually Macon as well). A key aspect of this “sex scene” is that the sex (“…he ejaculated quickly. She liked it that way. So did he.”) is not as important as the foreplay (“complicated underwear that he deliberately took a long time to undo.”). I wouldn't call this perverse, but it does give some insight into their relationship. Also, this sex scene is a memory from twenty years ago. Macon admits that “[l]ittle by little he remembered fewer and fewer of the details, until finally he had to imagine them, even fabricate them, guess what they must have been” which might be something we should discuss later when Macon explains to Milkman why he hates Ruth. The sex-specifically the foreplay-is what Macon remembers because it becomes the “nourishment of his outrage.”
Sheehy
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