Although the story centers on Joe and Violet Trace, the text does not support a single protagonist or antagonist. Instead, Morrison uses an ensemble technique to emphasize community and connection. Joe Trace’s story centers the plot. Born in Virginia to a Black woman who lived outside the bounds of society and raised without a sense of parental love, the cosmetics salesperson does not know how to express his own love. When he learns his mother’s identity and how to locate her, Joe tracks her in the woods, finding her near four red-winged blackbirds. Joe hides in a hibiscus plant and asks Wild to put her hand through the branches to indicate that she is his mother. However, it is dark, and he is unsure whether her hand moves. Believing she has rejected him, Joe fires an empty shot at her.

Joe carries this violent cycle of rejection with him into his marital relationship with Violet and affair with Dorcas. He closes himself off to Violet, unwilling to engage with her own pain and emotions.

After years of an estranged marriage, Joe decides he is ready for intimacy and seeks it with a young woman named Dorcas.