Richard Wright's The Man Who Was Almost a Man The Man Who Was Almost a Man is a fictitious short story about an uneducated black boy's quest to become a man. Growing up in the early 1900's was a very hard task for most black people. The lack of education was one of the hardest hills they had to overcome to make it in a world dominated by whites. The story centers upon one 17-year boy who has very low self-esteem caused by his peers. He believes that owning a gun will gain him respect with others and thus make him a man. The title of this short story has several different ways of being interpreted because the time and atmosphere in which it was written. The short story was written in first person narrative, which gives a graphic account of the personality of the character Dave. The short story is also written in a dialect of an uneducated black boy which gives the reader the feel of what is was like to be that young man back in the early 1900's. The stories title The Man Who Was Almost a Man holds many different meanings to how Dave must have felt back in those times. Dave's struggle was man versus society in an era where his skin color meant more than his actions. He was unable to interact with the white society and was outcast by his peers because of his age. He believed at this time in his life that being a man was the more important than life itself. Buying a gun and learning to shoot was his solution to becoming a man. This was not the case though. The first time he fired the gun it numbed his hands and fell to the ground. He also shot Mr. Hawkin's mule, which he was unable to cover up. Now everyone would know what he had done which would give his peers a bad impression of him. He would not gain their respect, nor... ... middle of paper ... ... a man. Life was hard back then and being accepted played a big role in all blacks searching for that one thing that would make them accepted within their society. Works Cited Blau, Eleanor. "The Works of Richard Wright, This Time Published as Written." The New York Times 28 Aug. 1991, final ed., sec. B: 1-2. Brignano, Russell Carl. An Introduction to the Man and His Works. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970. Fabre, Michel. The World of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1985. Hannon, Charles. "Teaching the conflicts as a temporary Instructor." College Literature 6 (1997): 126-141. Joyce, Joyce Ann. Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986. Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work. New York: Warner Books, 1988.
Updike, John. "A & P" Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. Michael Meyer. 6th Edition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2002.
The Man Who Was Almost a Man by Richard Wright is based on a seven-teen year old boy named Dave Saunders, who worked on a plantation plowing the fields and deep down, felt absolutely powerless. The short story introduces Dave as a weaker link compared to all the other plantation workers. “One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they couldn’t talk to him as though he were a little boy.” (Wright 294) This passage proves that Dave was treated very differently on the job. Wright uses symbolism in the story as to which the gun that Dave wants to buy, symbolizes him being a man. He wants to feel that power, he wants to mean something, and he wants to feel strong and free.
Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of RIchard Wright: A Study in Literature and Society. 1973. Reprint, Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
The black man in the Deep South of America was greatly despised during the 1950’s. The world that the Negroes lived in was not the same as whites in their society. In this book, John Howard Griffin Sacrifices his life as a middle-class white man and becomes a dirt poor Negro, trying to survive in the South. He simply did all of this in order to bring out the truth about what it is really and truly like to be a Negro in the South during the 1950’s.
As a child growing up in the Jim Crow South, Richard is faced with constant pressure to conform to the white authority. However, even from an early age, Richard has a strong spirit of rebellion. The black community reacts to his rebellion disapprovingly, and Richard suffers intense isolation and loneliness during the early years of his life, feeling that he does not fit in or belong with his family or the black community. An example of Richard’s rebelliousness because of his attempts to gain respect and equality is shown when he is selected as the valedictorian of his graduating class and he is asked to deliver a speech. The principal calls him to his office and tells him to recite a speech that the principal wrote himself, saying that Richard needs to recite his speech because he is going to be speaking in front of white people and it is important to make a good impression. Richard, of course, refuses the principal’s speech and recites his own, despite the disapproving feelings of his peers and el...
Ford, Richard. “Introduction” in : Yates, R., Revolutionary Road, (2001 edition), Methuen Publishing Ltd, London.
Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.
7. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. From Scribner Writers Series. 26
“Lee, Harper 1926-.” Concise Major 21 Century Writers. Ed. Tracey L. Matthews. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 2136-2140. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 15 Feb. 2011.
As I read Black Boy, Griffin provided me with a small insight on the way whites and blacks were differently treated. Black Like Me was based on a white man who wanted to get a better understanding of the life of negroes and how it feels to be treated unequally. He wanted to know what stood between the white man and black man, why they could not communicate. Griffin writes in his book that, “the only way I could see to bridge the gap between us was to become a Negro” (Griffin 1). His journey then began and he lived the life of a black man. It is with such bravery that he went and risked becoming a Negro. He knew that adverse consequences would occur once people knew the truth. He did not care; I was fascinated with his desire to see what...
Throughout the short story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man”, Dave struggled to find his manhood, but it seems as that he had the wrong idea of what it took to actually become a man because of his poor decisions.
The Man Who Was Almost a Man, an interesting choice of title. It implies that Dave is close to being a man. But this could not be farther from the truth. Dave is a boy who wants more out of his life. This is a very relatable trait to have as a character.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
The story "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" is at first glance a story about childhood disobedience. However, it is much deeper than that the story is about a young boy named Dave who is frustrated with how the other men he works alongside in the field. Dave sees the gun in the story as an easy way to gain the respect of the other men and the fields and an easy way to become man. Dave goes to visit Joe, who is a white man, at the beginning of the story to try and purchase a gun from his Sears catalog that he keeps at his store. When Dave gets home you can see the simple lifestyle they live and how his parents are not considerably kind to him. Dave must beg his mother for the gun and his money to buy the gun. Richard Wright suggests that in this way Dave is very childish and not yet ready to be a man. When Dave accidently kills the mule it shows the responsibility of true manhood that Dave is clearly not ready to take on. The
to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2005. Facts