John Redding (“John Redding Goes to Sea”)

At the start of the short story, John Redding is 10 years old and known around town as “a queer child” (1). John has a strong imagination and dreams of traveling the world. He is intelligent and well educated, but remains in Florida because he values the opinion of his mother. In the meantime, he gives into his physical desire and marries a woman named Stella, who also opposes his wish to travel. The night after John announces his joining the Navy, he agrees to work on a river bridge before an impending storm. When Alf, Mattie, and Stella go to fetch him the next morning, they find his corpse floating in the river.

Sam Simpson and Stella (“The Conversion of Sam”)

Stella is a transplant from Virginia to Harlem, and she gets a job at Jim’s shop as a waitress. There, she...