The title refers to statues popular in the Jim Crow-era Southern United States, depicting grotesque minstrelsy characters.
Like most of her other works, the story reflects O'Connor's Roman Catholic beliefs and acts as a parable.
Along the way there, they pass a plaster cast of a Black figure with a watermelon adorning a lawn fence from which the story gets its title.
The story ends with them leaving the city and, after getting off the train, standing at their whistle stop in a mild state of shock.
Mr. Head experiences again this mysterious divine mercy, which "covered his pride like a flame and consumed it", and Nelson says, "I'm glad I've went once, but I'll never go back again!
His efforts are disrupted by a white student who, although not having actually read the story, repeatedly expresses discomfort that the word nigger is written on the class board.