When we discussed the ending of White Boy Shuffle in class, I realized that the topics we were covering consistently overlapped with the themes of the poem, "America", we talked about previously. One main discussion topic was the aspect of perspective and how the eagle looked free and appeared to be flying but in reality was trapped and unable to be independent. Similarly, Gunnar seems to have everything anyone would want (Literary genius, fame, prodigy basketball player, etc.) but still feels confined to the suffocating views of the White people. Because of this, he feels that the only course of action left is to drop a bomb on the entire Black population as a final Black movement. Another interesting aspect is the idea of dependency. For example, in order for the eagle to even appear like it's flying, someone, presumably a white person, would have to flip the coin off their finger. In White Man Shuffle, most of Gunnar's unwanted fame and glory stems from the attention of white spectators who use him as a source of their entertainment and "generosity". I think the author does an amazing job of showcasing this sense of inevitability and traps their reader into the exact perspective that Gunnar fights to get rid of at the end, which is a sense of loss and disappointment of Gunnar's waste of his talents.
This novel has kept me hooked throughout each chapter and I feel that it's fitting, in regard to the theme of amusing yet uncomfortable irony, that the solution the genius Gunnar Kaufman comes up with to finally free the Blacks from the views of society is such a simple one, yet no one left on the Earth would be able to understand.
