” I could literally smell his sweat, hear every ragged breath, every cry, every cut of the whip…My stomach heaved, and I had to force myself to stay where I was and keep quiet. Why didn’t they stop!” (p36)

In this scene, the patrols are physically tormenting and abusing the father of Alice, in front of his wife and daughter. Dana alway witnesses this beating, but by accident. No one knows she’s there in the bushes watching. She talks about how intense and brutal the whipping was. The man is laying there getting shamed in front of his family. She says she can “hear every ragged breath”. It was so intense that it was a challenge for her to stay still and stay quiet. It was unbearable to watch, nothing like she’s ever seen in the movies. She describes it at as her being “far less prepared for the reality of it”. With the last line in that quote, “why didn’t they stop!”, Dana is expressing a sense of confusion. She wasn’t from that time period or area so she had no idea who these white men were and what there motives were for brutalizing this man.

This quote relates to the text as a whole because it is the first encounter she has with slaves ever and she gets to experience what they go through on a daily basis. She is from more than a century later, and she lives in California, whereas Rufus and Alice lived in Maryland. Slavery has been abolished by then. Shortly after, Dana is also spotted by the patrol in front of Alice’s home and receives the same treatment, with the addition of almost getting raped.