In the short story, the main character, Nat Lime, loves to being with black people, but they do not love to be around him. All of his life he has lived in a predominately black neighborhood and he loves to be around black people. The only problem is that he is a white Jew and in the 1960's blacks could not trust any white men. He has spent his entire life trying to prove to people that he is not the average Jew and does not consider himself to be different from anyone. In the story he interacts with several different blacks that turn him away and eventually cause him to feel pain physically and emotionally. Nat Lime fails with black people socially, politically, economically, religiously, and psychologically; it just his faith.
             Nat Lime as a huge problem socially more then any other characteristics, with blacks. Since Mr. Lime is the minority in the neighborhood, he tries extra hard to fit in. He goes to the block parties they have every so often and even tries to be friends with some of the children his age. Buster is one of the children that he forced himself upon. Nat Lime would tries to make him his friend by inviting him to the movies. Buster could not offered to go to the movies so he excepted his invitation. After a few trips to the movies Buster was disgusted by the fact that Nat Lime, a Jew, was trying to buy his friendship. That is a prime example on how he tried too hard to be friends with blacks. Nat Lime also has a problem of picking the wrong people to be friends with. Instead of him being friends with some who has experessed the same feelings he has about race, he picks those who do not want to be bothered, by anyone. Another example is mrs. Ornita Harris, the woman that he thought was the love of his life.
             Mrs. Harris, a black woman, dated Mr. Lime for a while but was scared to commit. Mrs. Harris just like Buster did not want a white man helping her with her problems. She had a cheap on a ...