The plot of this story by Richard Wright is not a confusing one - a boy wants a gun, he buys a gun, he accidentally shoots a mule, he runs away - but the underlying themes, symbols, autobiographical references and overall subject matter could be talked about for days. And while this was the story that my group and I discussed in our 45 minutes of fame leading the class, I found The Man Who Was Almost A Man especially interesting.
Essentially, this story was about a kid who could not fit in anywhere. Dave, a 17-year-old black boy, is constantly bullied by the other black people in the community. “Whut’s the use talking wid em n****** in the field?...Them n****** can’t understan nothing. 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.” And at the same time, being a black in the South in the 1930s-40s, Dave is not accepted by the white community either.
This is a direct relation to the life of the author, Richard Wright. In 1927, at the age of 19, Wright moved from his home in Mississippi to Chicago and the John Reed Club, a group noted for its communist ideals. From there, he moved to New York, where he became acquainted with more communists. However, the white communists rescinded their offer to find him housing, thereby leaving him out of their group. Moreover, the black communists considered him a bourgeois intellectual assimilated with white culture (even though Wright’s highest level of formal education was simple grammar) and kept him out of their group. Knowing this, it is interesting to see how this isolation transposed onto paper within his characters. The morning after buying the gun, Dave reflects on his new possession: “In the gray light of dawn he held it loosely, feeling a sense of power. Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white.” This is obviously an example of the presence of racism in the south during that time, but Dave’s hatred toward both races shows the true isolation of this character (and author), and one can see how Wright could eventually come to befriend such people as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus, known existentialists.
The glaring irony in this story was also noteworthy. The name of the story is The Man Who Was Almost A Man because it is the story of a boy searching for manhood. Power and control are what he believes a true man possesses, and this is why he acquires the gun, something which will give him power over anyone and everyone. However, what I believe to be attributes of a man are responsibility, maturity and poise. Dave works and earns money, but nobody believes him to be mature enough to handle this money. Therefore, he must go through his mother to “purchase” or “acquire” his manhood with the gun. In fact, he can’t even confront his father, which is probably the best example of manhood he sees regularly. After purchasing the gun, Dave hides his from his family, the first of many examples that he is not responsible enough to own one. Just after shooting Jenny, he immediately begins forming a lie about what happened; he is not able to take responsibility for his actions. The last major example of this comes at the end of the story when Dave decides to jump on a train going North with just an empty gun in his possession. He leaves to search for manhood, but in essence, he is leaving to escape the responsibility of paying for his actions. He has not learned from his mistake.
I understand that Dave’s alienation from the other African American’s was part of Wright’s autobiographical portrayal in the story, but I think it has even further significance to the story. While the story definitely has undertones of racial tension, I think that the alienation from whites and blacks serves to show that the reason for Dave’s isolation is due more to his lack of maturity than his race. There is little evidence of him being treated differently because he is black. He is treated differently and laughed at because he is immature and does not take responsibility for his actions.
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