The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

But who can resist the seductions of elevators these days, those stepping stones to Heaven, which make relentless verticality so alluring?

The Four Questions?” “As put forth by Mettleheim: How did this happen? How could this happen? Is it exceptional? How will it be avoided in the future?”

What does the perfect elevator look like, the one that will deliver us from the cities we suffer now, these stunted shacks? We don’t know because we can’t see inside it, it’s something we cannot imagine, like the shape of angels’ teeth. It’s a black box.

The publicity of the present day causes that no sooner is a discovery or an invention made than it is already improved upon and surpassed by competing efforts.

I seen all kinds of white people in my life, and I’ll tell you something. They all alike. Every last one of them. Act like I’m not even in the room. To hear them say such things, the things they say, right in front of my face, like I’m not even in the room. Such horrible things.

An elevator doesn’t exist without its freight. If there’s no one to get on, the elevator remains in quiescence. The elevator and the passenger need each other.”

I’m all for your people. You might not think so, but I am. I’m all for colored progress, but gradual. You can’t do everything overnight—that would be chaos.”

The white people do not see colored people, even in broad daylight, in the middle of town.

No, Fulton was colored. She understands this luminous truth. Natchez did not lie about that: she has seen it in the man’s books, made plain by her new literacy. In the last few days she has learned how to read, like a slave does, one forbidden word at a time.

It’s not so different up there, Lila Mae. They have the same white people up there they got down here. It might look different. It might feel different. But it’s the same.”

There was no hope for him as a colored man because the white world will not let a colored man rise, and there was no hope for him as a white man because it was a lie.

There will be no redemption because the men who run this place do not want redemption. They want to be as near to hell as they can.

She has always considered herself an atheist, not realizing she had a religion. Anyone can start a religion. They just need the need of others.

“Let one colored in and you’re integrated. Let two in, you got a race war as they try to kiss up to whitey.”

Then one day they will realize it is not perfect. If it is the right time she will give them the perfect elevator. If it is not time she will send out more of Fulton’s words to let them know it is coming. As per his instructions. It is important to let the citizens know it is coming. To let them prepare themselves for the second elevation.

She will make the necessary adjustments. It will come. She is never wrong. It’s her intuition.