Irene and Clare are both light-skinned and can "pass" for white.
             Irene chooses not to. She and marries a black doctor and lives in Harlem.
             Clare does pass for white, and marries a wealthy racist who has no idea of
             her black origins. He says, "'I don't dislike them, I hate them . . . .
             They give me the creeps. The black scrimy devils . . . . And I read in the
             papers about them. Always robbing and killing people.' And, 'he added
             darkly, 'worse'" (Larsen 172). Clare lives a wonderful life, and Irene
             lives the "white" life vicariously though Clare after they meet again in
             later life. In fact, both the women turn their backs on their roots and
             live troubled lies, which eventually leads to mental deterioration in Irene
             and the accidental (or is it') death of Clare. Irene, in one of her
             coherent moments, tells her husband, "'. . . I'm really not such an idiot
             that I don't realize that if a man calls me a nigger, it's his fault the
             first time, but mine it he has the opportunity to do it again'" (Larsen
             184). The novel is a sad testament to racism in our country, and shows how
             racism affected whites and blacks, and how many blacks were reverse
             racists, and did not even believe it.
             The ultimate theme of the book is racism in America, and what it can
             lead to, and Larsen wrote it at a time when these themes were not commonly
             explored in the white world. However, this theme goes deeper to look at
             how the races see themselves. Clare and Irene cannot accept what they are,
             and so they lead unhappy lives filled with lies. Ultimately, the whites
             wanted the blacks to simply "disappear," and Clare neatly complies when she
             "disappears" through the window after her identity is revealed. Thus, the
             theme delves not only into the hatred whites feel for blacks, but the
             hatred some blacks feel for themselves, and how it can lead to their
             destruction, both physically and mentally.
             ...