It's ironic that Marcus resorted to going to Liberia when all he wanted at home was to be with Rita. Marcus says, "he wouldn't come back until he knew, until he really understood what the darkness was" (75-76). Apparently, Rita was aware of Marcus' characteristics long before they fell in love with each other, but she said: “Sometimes he made me fear him. Sometimes I think that made me love him more” (74). "He hugged me, he kissed me longer than I could bear, he said goodbye, he promised that he would change, we would clear things up, he would be born again, we would get married and we would raise fat, tanned and not rare children" (76). Rita managed to create an image of the ideal man she wanted Marcus to become and convinced herself that this was the man she would settle down with. Marcus was initially attracted to Rita, not for her "unsightly, frizzy black hair or heavy breasts, but for her face that, in his opinion, no boy on campus could forget, and her legs, in his opinion, were not those of a bird" (73). Because of Marcus's personality traits, he didn't seem to realize that he was sabotaging any chance of having anything serious