“Baas,” the black man asks at last, “Why has your house no windows and no doors?”The white man has become very sad. “That, too, you cannot understand,” he says. “Long ago in another country my forefathers built walls to keep out the sea. Thick, watertight walls. That’s why my house too, has no windows and no doors.”
Alternate perspective: In this scene the white man has become sad and shows a change in emotion from once being hostile towards the black man. He acts as a different person complicating his character because now he is not just seen as an opressor but as someone who might feel regret for their actions but won't change due to the oppressive system his ancestors established. The emotional shift occurs as they are finishing the house and changes from dominance to regret but the end goal of segregation remains.
Most difficult passage: I feel that the reading was overall easy to understand after, but what made this paragraph difficult to understand was the change in emotion from the white man. Why is there a shift in emotion in the white man? And why does he continue to build the house after he feels sad? Why are there no windows and no doors? The passage does not explicitly state the reason behind his change in perspective, but one can infer that the white man is aware that segregation is wrong but does not have it in him to change.