Property

John Cabot’s identity in the poem almost entirely surrounds his material possessions. In fact, the speaker describes very little about his personality or background, instead spending a paragraph listing his possessions. The specificity and seeming triviality of the objects he had “almost forgotten” contributes to the mocking tone of the poem. Even though his life is in danger, he only thinks about his car, liquor, and pieces of art. The property is ultimately his downfall, for the wealthy “die expensively today” (27). Ironically, his valuable property cannot protect him against the smells emanating from the riot. Although the smells are immaterial, the “pig foot, chitterling and cheap chili malign and mocked” him (23-24). The rioters may not own any property, but their smells which characterize their domestic life “breathed on him and touched him” (22).

Whiteness

The ultimate piece of property that Cabot owns in his whiteness...