Americana
Sambo and the coin bank Ellison portrays the narrator’s experiences with racist objects to provide insight into the black stereotypes plaguing the nation and how the narrator perceives them. The coin bank and Sambo are separated by many chapters yet share similar meanings. They both have racist connotations from times of slavery and infuriate the narrator. The stereotyped appearance of the coin bank that is introduced in the 15th chapter doesn’t appear until the narrator is leaving Mary’s place where he proceeds to smash it to smithereens. Sambo appears just as spontaneously as the piece of early Americana and makes the narrator just as transfixed as when he saw the bank. Both appeared to be right under his nose, “Then near the door I saw something which I’d never noticed there before: the cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro, whose white eyes stared up at me from the floor...(319)” and when he sees Sambo he says, “Puzzled, I moved into the crowd and p