The tension that arose in the reader’s mind for the party to go well for Mick, given the knowledge of her character and her tendency to not quite fit in with her peers, does come about when the boys and girls are reluctant to mingle and the party is crashed by neighborhood kids. But there is no real conflict that sets it off, no turning point that changes the mood except for Mick’s noticing the difference in where the partygoers group together, and a louder commotion caused by the crashers, but the conflict is rather anticlimactic in my mind, and in fact, Mick does the wildest thing by running down the street and jumping into a ditch thus ruining her fancy borrowed clothes.
There is another, deeper tension going on between the hired help at Mick’s house, Portia, and her father, Dr. Copeland though Portia does her best to keep peace.
Dr. Copeland is a negro who he feels has bettered himself through his hard work and choice of profession, and his adamant planning for his children to do even better is stronger that his understanding that his children need to be who they want to be. He belittles his race in his thinking that they do not try hard enough to overcome their struggles and settle instead for an easier position second to white folk. He is sickly and though he goes along with Portia’s planned family reunion with his estranged father-in-law and sons, he feels the same anger and rage building within him and cannot compromise or tolerate their values. He leaves the group shortly after hearing the old man explain his visions:
"Many a day when I be plowing or working," Grandpapa said slowly, "I done thought and reasoned about the time when Jesus going to descend again to this earth. (…) And this here the way I done planned it. I reason I will get to stand before Jesus with all my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and kinfolks and friends and I say to him, ‘Jesus Christ, us is all sad colored peoples.’ And then he will place His holy hand upon our heads and straightway us will be white as cotton. That the plan and reasoning that been in my heart a many and a many time." (p. 124)
The next day, Dr. Copeland is involved in a minor physical run in with Jake Blount, and his hatred not only of the insolence of whites but of the negroes’ willing subservience is obvious. There’s a sensitivity and yet a braveness about Carson McCullers’ probing into the reasons and beliefs of her characters. With no narrative bias we are given their values and dreams and in their interaction, can watch without moral judgement as they draw their own paths through this novel.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology