the wedding p. 180-240

Summary

After reminiscing about his ancestry Shelby's father drives back to the Oval. He is faced with a problen though becuase his girlfriend that he was having an affair with for 19 years finally called it quits. she (Rachael) felt that their relationship wasn't going anywhere becuase Shelby's father still didn't ask his wife for a divorce yet for over 19 years. In order to avoid his daoughter Shelby from making the same mistake he adviced her not to marry her fiance Meade. He felt that she was only doing it becuase she doesn't want to get involved with an African American man. since he made the mistake of not marrying an African American Woman when he had the chance he didn't want his daughter to make the same mistakes. Upon hearing what her father had to say, Shelby became outraged becuase she felt her whole family wasn't supporting her marriage to Meade. So Shelby decided to take a chance to see if she was missing out of anything by going to see Lute Mcneil. Lute being obsessed with Shelby even though he was still married to another woman lied to her that he was already divorced on the day before her wedding. on her wedding day things starts going wrong. Lute's wife came to the Oval to confront the woman who she thought was going to steal him away from her. Lute being a man of great anger beat and pushed his wife and shoved her into the car because she was going to ruin his plan of marrying Shelby. Lute shoved her into his car and drove, and while not paying attention to the road hit his daughter Tina and she died. Shelby witnessing this knew that Lute wasn't the man for her and decided she was going to stay with her fiance Meade.

Quotation

" he suddenly noticed the quality of the air in the car-through the closed window on his left the sun's lancing rays seemed to shimmer before him"(West 191).

Reaction

This is a scene describing the reactions that Shelby's father had after he found out that his girlfriend Racheal didn't want to be with him anymore. this qoute means that after all that time he realized that he has been doing things wrong all his life. The quality of the air is describing how he suddenly woke up from this dream that he has been living in all that time in his life. And gave him new found hope that he can change his daughter's life before she can make a decision that she's going to regret for the rest of her life.