"Todd shook as with a chill, searching Jefferson’s face for a trace of the mockery he had seen there. But now the face was somber and tired and old. He was confused. He could not be sure that there had ever been laughter there, that Jefferson had ever really laughed in his whole life. He saw Jefferson reach out to touch him and shrank away, wondering if anything except the pain, now causing his vision to waver, was real. Perhaps he had imagined it all." (Ellison 218)

After Todd's jarring, impassioned response to Jefferson's story, Todd finds himself struggling to understand whether Jefferson had intended to mock him at all. The seemingly innocent and oblivious nature of Jefferson's story is disarming to Todd , who is driven to a fever pitch by his assumption that Jefferson is not taking his situation seriously. Todd is acutely aware of the danger surrounding him after having crashed in the hostile South. He thinks in literal, pragmatic terms while Jefferson tells bizarre parables that Todd simply believes to be unenlightened nonsense. Jefferson copes with his identity as a black Southerner through his stories while Todd writhes in discomfort at the uncertainty and frustrations facing his more straightforward method of forming his identity. He is enraged that Jefferson does not understand the gravity of his plight as a black man in the South, but this is not the case. Jefferson's identity in the South is developed in a profoundly different way than Todd's and it allows him to somehow transcend the immense difficulties he faces living there.

Discussion Question: How does Todd's understanding of his identity allow him to transcend the worries and anxiety that Todd displays?