Uncertain

It's rather fitting that a book where the two main characters who cannot be clearly distinguished as either black or white should end with so many unclear answers. Clare "fell" out of a window, but the reader never entirely knows whether that fall was a jump or a push. The reader is also left guessing at the relationship Clare and Brian held. And yet, the uncertainties leave the reader wondering who is the victim? Is it Clare, the girl who was forced by her white aunts to hide her identity after her father passed away? Was it her fault that as the daughter of an unwealthy African-American janitor, she would want have a life comforted by money and better treatment if the key to that was severing her ties to her race- a race that really faced hardship day after day with the uncertainties of freedom (and the limitations of it)? Yet, after her young eyes were opend to the reality of the world she chose, she simply wanted to retreat back to the comfort of her race. Was she the victim of murder? Or is the victim Irene, whose life seemed to be unraveling all around her from the moment Clare produced a letter? Was Clare a leech taking from Irene all the things she had lost herself? Did Irene murder the one who rejected her own race, or did she simply try to stop her from jumping? It's all so unclear, yet it produces so much insight to the challenges of passing.