Unnamed College Students

This icon represents two sets of college students. (1) The classmates Temple thinks of twice during her ordeal at the Frenchman's place: first, while lying in the dark at the Old Frenchman's place, when she thinks of "the slow couples strolling toward the sound of the supper bell" (51); and then, while hiding from Pap, whom she hears defecating in the barn, when she imagines them "leaving the dormitories in their new spring clothes" toward the bells of the churches (87; see also 152). (2) The "throng of them" as seen by Horace when he gets off the train at the Oxford station (170). "They" seem to be all college students, and essentially all women. The description of what he sees does mention "their escorts," the men wearing "colored shirts" who hold hands with them, but it is striking how those men are made almost invisible next to the women, "in bright dresses," "swinging their little hips," "looking at Horace with cold, blank eyes" (170-71). And again, when he leaves the university branch of the post office, Horace seems to see only the female students on the campus, "like music moving, like honey poured in sunlight" (172). And at the station again, waiting to leave, he watches as "they began to gather, "their bodies moving continually inside their scant garments" (172).