What is “passing”? To understand why Homer Barron would want to “pass” one must first understand what it means. Passing is: “an opportunity to gain …show more content…
The Elks’ Club was not racially integrated until the mid-1970s. Where better to hide but in plain sight? “Another odd factor about Homer is that following his ‘disappearance’ no outsiders ever come to seek for him” (Argiro n.pag). While it is possible that he has no family, it seems far more likely that he was indeed passing and therefore had cut himself off from his family. Often individuals who chose to “pass” as white would cut themselves off completely from their families so they would not be found out. “Passing required life-altering changes…[many] severed ties completely from their black family to live a solitary white life” (Johnson n.pag).
Additionally, when Homer’s body is found it is clothed in the nightshirt Emily bought for him and he is lying in bed in a lovers pose. “The body had once lain in the attitude of embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him” (Faulkner 98). This implies that he and Emily had been intimate before his