The overarching theme of the play is the devastating multi-generational impact of slavery on the African-American experience. The characters who arrive at the Holly boarding house are seeking to escape the degrading segregation of Jim Crow laws and subsistence poverty of share cropping in the South. The children of former slaves, they have inherited a legacy of loss and separation. Mattie’s mother died toiling in a peach orchard, Molly’s mother worked herself to death in the households of white people, Loomis lost seven years of his life and his wife as the result of unlawful imprisonment. They are alone, and disconnected from family and community, wandering from place to place, carrying the psychological weight of their suffering. In contrast, Seth, born in the North to free parents, is a generation further removed from slavery and is less directly burdened by its legacy.

The search for identity in the aftermath of slavery is a critical aspect of the African-American experience as depicted in the play. The characters come to the Holly’s boarding house in search of someone or something. Bynum, the boarder with the most developed identity, has found his song, and he guides the others as they seek to complete themselves, often helping them to clarify what they are looking for.