"Mr. Z" by M. Carl Holman

After reading “Mr. Z,” a poem by M. Carl Holman, I took from it the message that the character of the poem was making a fruitless attempt to escape his past. Throughout the entirety of the work, it appears as though the unnamed character, assumed to be Mr. Z, is working to try and remove any traces of his past. I determined that Mr. Z was likely biracial, yet rather than embracing both of his cultures, he tried to erase one culture and completely change his life into that of an Anglo-Saxon. The author describes how the character transformed himself in order to conform to what others thought was proper or correct. His habits changed, his spouse changed and even his eating habits changed, as the story states, “his palate shrunk from cornbread, yams, and collards,” (Holman). However, they key word in my discovered message is fruitless. Even though Mr. Z followed all the rules and tried to be like the others, his endeavors were unsuccessful. Furthermore, as he drifted farther and farther away from his true background, he drifted away from any background at all. He was able to pursue a life free from ethnic boundaries, yet in death, he was once again grouped with the people he wanted to get so far away from. The closing line of the poem is “one of the most distinguished members of his race,” (Holman), so even though Mr. Z spent his life trying to reshape his past, he was unsuccessful and fell back into racial categorization.