'The Man Who Was Almost A Man'

In the short story “The Man Who was Almost a Man” we read about a young seventeen-year-old African American boy named Dave, who is struggling with the fact that he is still seen and treated as a child. In his attempts to be viewed as mature and earn the respect of his community, he buys a gun with money given to him by his mother. He believes that with a gun in his possession others will be forced to respect him the book states, “…if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him.” The passage I chose was when the crowd had formed after Jenny the mule was shot by Dave, and they were trying to get to the bottom of the incident. Immediately the townsfolk were doubtful Dave’s faux story that Jenny impaled herself on the plow, and began interrogating Dave for the truth. While his story was

Hawkins aren’t that angry. Instead they seem to view it as a childish mistake rather than a crime, “Somebody in the crowd laughed. Jim Hawkins walked close to Dave and looked into his face. ‘Well, looks like you have bought you a mule, Dave.’ ‘Ah swear fo Gawd, Ah didn go t kill the mule, Mistah Hawkins!’ ‘But you killed her!’ All the crowd was laughing now.” (Wright) If the crowd had viewed Dave as an adult, the atmosphere might have been less lighthearted, and would have been treated as a much more serious offense. This fact bothered Dave especially as later that day while in bed he was thinking of the incident, “Something hot seemed to turn over inside him each time he remembered how they had laughed.” (Wright) He knew that the townsfolk didn’t take him seriously, and that this event just furthered solidified that he was still a child in the eyes of his peers. So instead of sticking around and trying to build his reputation again, and paying off the death of the mule, he hopped in a boxcar of a train so he could, “[go] away to somewhere, somewhere he could be a