compromise position which clearly does not satisfy or give him any real peace:
My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet . . . I cannot repress the thought that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage (154).
In other words, the protagonist claims he does not desire to be otherwise, but it is clear that he does in fact have such a desire, repressed only by his love for his children. This passage is rife with the ambivalence which marks the entire book, the result of the protagonist's mixed racial make-up and the fact that his responses to that racial reality are based not in emotion but in mental evasion.
The ironies which serve as the turning points of the book are rooted in the protagonist's unorthodox responses to his situation. He is raised as a white and believes that he is white. H
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