Select any one of the questions below or any topic of your choice, but I would like everyone to tell me one thing please (quite literally) --- Who is Bill (1376)? You may write one sentence to answer this literal question at the beginning or end of your blog. Thank you.
1. Why isn't the story called The Boy Who Was Almost A Man? Explain.
2. According to The Man Who Was Almost a Man, what kept Dave from being or becoming a man? Why was he "almost a man"? Was something lacking or missing? Can you specify what is might be?
3. What is Dave's relationship to Jenny? Does he have compassion for her, or is he self-centered? Use lines from the text with analysis to prove your viewpoint please.
4. Who is Bill (1376)? Interpret the last six or seven lines of the story. What do they mean? Will another place allow Dave to be a man?
5. Make a brief list of significant comparisons among this story and previous stories we studied this semester (in terms of issues this story raises that other stories also raise; the perspectives on these issues may be and most likely are very different).
6. Dicuss either the role of family or the role of community in the events and outcome of this story. Do they play a positive, negative, or neutral role? What evidence do you have to support your view? Why is this question important?
3. Dave does have compassion for Jenny, but ultimately values himself more than her. He talks to her as though he is having a conversation, and almost comically warns her not to react to the gunshot. His reaction to her shifts between the moment she is safe but a nuisance and the moment she is in danger. First, he refers to her as a creature, "ol mule!" (1372). He is treating her as an object, a piece of the farm. When he experiences the initial shock of recognizing that he has shot Jenny, he immediately becomes concerned for her. He does not think of the consequences he will face if she dies; he thinks about how he did not mean to hurt her and how he can help save her. "Good Gawd! Ah wuzn't shootin at tha mule. He felt panic. He knew he had to stop that blood, or Jenny would bleed to death" (1372). She goes from "ol mule" and "tha mule" to Jenny in his mind.
ReplyDeleteFor the moment that she is in danger and he thinks he may help, he focuses on her. He refers to her by name, quietly and with concern. However, when he has to choose between potential help for her and exposing his crime, he chooses himself. "He looked in the direction of home, wanting to go back, wanting to get help. But he saw the pistol lying in the damp black clay. " (1372). When he looks back, he recognizes at least the potential for help from the people there. This help may or may not have saved Jenny. Both he and the reader cannot know, because when Dave sees the pistol on the bloodied dirt, the undeniable proof of his mistake, he won't face the people of home in order to save Jenny. Even Dave recognizes that this moment is pivotal, "He had a queer feeling that if he only did something, this would not be; Jenny would not be there bleeding to death." He understands that he has the opportunity to commit himself to an action that would save Jenny. Instead, he fears the consequences of shooting her, and watches as she bleeds to death. Jenny dies slowly, with Dave feeling "helpless." Through the use of "long time" and "slowly", the author emphasizes the space between Dave's decision not to go for help and Jenny's actual death, "For a long time she held her neck erect; then her head sank, slowly. Her ribs swelled with a mighty heave and she went over" (1372). Dave fails to risk himself to save her, and faces the consequences for shooting her anyway.
Dave does not think about Jim Hawkins until after he realizes Jenny is dead: "There was Jenny lying with her mouth open and her eyes walled and glassy. He could not tell Jim Hawkins he had shot his mule" (1372). She has returned to being property, Jim Hawkin's property specifically, and she no longer matters on her own. That quotation converts the death from a tragedy for Jenny to a crime against Jim Hawkins. By the story's conclusion, Jenny has returned to being just a mule, and Dave sees only his perceived injustice in his situation. He thinks, "Fifty dollars for a dead mule," reducing Jenny to an equation of economics and production value. His reduction of her individuality shows that compassion he felt for her could not overcome the pity he felt for himself.
Lastly, Dave still glorifies using the gun. Although he has killed one of the few characters in the text he could talk to without feeling intimidated or inferior, he thinks back to the act of shooting and sees it positively. "He turned over, thinking how he had fired the gun. He had an itch to fire it again" (1375). Any concern he had for Jenny, and any remorse he had for killing her, is overruled by the empowerment he felt firing the gun.
I don't know if anyone can say definitively who Bill is, but he is probably one of the farmhands from the opening paragraph, which would bring the text full-circle to its opening idea.
Unreliable online sources say that Bill is Dave's father. I can't find any evidence in the text that this is true, but it does give an interesting spin to the story if you consider it this way. Initially, I thought that Bill must be one of Dave's peers on the farm, and so when he says, "Ah betcha Bill wouldn't do it!" he is measuring himself against a supposed equal, and finding himself to be more courageous, brave, manly, or whatever. Considering Bill as Dave's father would make things different. After all, even though Dave's father rules his household with an apparent iron fist and expects unquestioning obedience from Dave, he still doesn't own the gun that Dave (and the reader) associate with masculine power. So Dave's father is a man who is almost a man: he doesn't have a gun and is symbolically impotent because of it, despite his seeming power. It would make sense, then, for Dave to think of his father right before jumping on the train. We could imagine him thinking something like, "Dad thinks he's tough but I'm the REAL man because I'm the one with a gun and the courage to jump this train." Of course, all of this is purely speculative because I can't find any evidence that points to Bill as the father... but it seems to fit with the Freudian undercurrents of the story. Oedipus, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe story could have been called, "The Boy Who Was Almost a Man," and that title would be more logically consistent with itself than Wright's title. After all, a boy IS a male who is not yet a man, literally speaking. But Wright's title gives a sense of paradox and uncertainty as to what Dave's status is. It begs the question, "What is a man who is almost a man?" Perhaps it suggests that Dave doesn't need a gun to be a man. He IS a man, even though he feels himself to be "almost" a man. Or: he IS a man, even though his society treats him like less than a man. Perhaps Wright intended to draw attention to the way in which society puts a not-so-subtle pressure on adolescents to PROVE themselves as men. Or how adolescents (especially adolescent males?) start to feel that society isn't properly recognizing them... Dave starts to feel differently about himself, and so expects society (Mom and Dad, especially) to feel differently about him, too. When they still treat him like a boy, this is the tension that causes him to act out and seek to prove himself.
I kind of thought Bill could be Dave's father, but it could be his brother. The brother was with the father, like a little shadow, so maybe Dave was alluding to the fact that Bill will always follows his father's orders.
ReplyDeleteI think this story is difficult and complex.
Part of what keeps Dave from being a man is his relationship with his parents. He's working like a man and being treated like a child. His mother gets his wages and he is afraid to stand up to his father. He is boy in the sense that he is under parental rule -- he is a man in the sense that he wants to make his own decisions -- somewhat rebellious, but in a strange way. He has a lot of pent up hostility because he is afraid to be independent. He relies on his parents for emotional support and that is his biggest problem -- he will never grow up like that.
The ending is surprising because he finally takes that jump (literally, hahaha) that he needs to become a man. He'll probably be OK now.
I can't decide what he thinks about Jenny. That was terribly upsetting to read .... it seemed like selfishness, but he also panicked.
Not sure.
Thanks for listening!
Robin
Dave is looking for a quick fix. He wants to grow up faster, probably because he's surrounded by men and apparently has nobody around his own age. The gun is the great equalizer. "Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him" (1370-1371). Men, real men, earn respect. Dave is confusing respect with fear.
ReplyDeleteThe title is important because it highlights the contrast between how Dave sees himself and how he actually exists. He thinks he is a man, when clearly he isn't.
The sexuality present in both "Blood Burning Moon" and "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" is something that caught my attention. The history of sexuality, particularly in regard to black men, in America is a complicated one. In "Blood Burning Moon" Tom's masculinity is threatened and so he lashes out. Bob Stone's manhood also takes a hit as he finds out that the woman he is carrying on with is also carrying on with a black man. What is not mentioned in "Blood Burning Moon" is that after such lynchings--sometimes during--the black men would be castrated--both literally and figuratively. In "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" we find just such a man. Confused with his own masculinity. Trying to come to terms with his own sexuality and what impact it has on the world around him and how his own sexuality causes others to treat him.
ReplyDeleteWhy isn't the story called The Boy Who Was Almost A Man? Explain
ReplyDeleteI can only theorize why the story is called what it is. Based in some cultures, a boy is considered a man when he reaches a certain age and/or supports his family. Being a black man during the reconstruction, Dave has the added pressure of helping to support his family during the summers, yet he does not get to feel as if he is a "man." His mother is over controlling and almost demeans him. He believes that to own a gun he would finally be a man, but with no solid father-figure to compare himself with, Dave is actually lost and his masculinity in question.
Going off what Dusty said and what was discussed in class this morning, when manhood is discussed, it is impossible to seperate this identity from a man's sexuality. The reader sees this blatantly on page 1375, "looking at Jim Hawkins' big white house, feeling the gun sagging in his pocket." If we care to translate, we see Dave standing in front of something he'll never have - the white man's sprawling home. Then we read about, "the gun sagging in the pocket." When faced with what Dave could never achieve, we see something akin to performance anxiety. Even the gun can't deliver Dave to where the white man is.
ReplyDeleteBill is one of the field hands alluded to in the first paragraph.
ReplyDeleteIn some ways, Jenny represents Dave: “They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me. He gritted his teeth” (1375). He like the other field hands and animals used and beaten in the process then disgarded. It is clear he cares for Jenny with lines like, ‘Hol on now ! Hol on....Jenny…Jenny,’ he whiphered.”
Dave is "almost a man" because he still possesses childlike qualities. His natural fear of the gun is what most shows this. He considers the gun to be the ultimate tool for manhood--for power and control. However when he first shoots the gun, he closes his eyes and turns away, ultimately losing control over it.
ReplyDelete"Hell, he told himself, Ah ain afraid. The gun felt loose in his forefingers; he waved it wildly for a moment. Then he shut his eyes and tightened his forefinger."
He treated the gun as a toy by "waving it wildly," showing that he still has childlike qualities by not showing the power of the gun any respect. All the while, showing his fear of it. He wanted to be considered a man and in some respects he was. He was of an age that (especially during that time period) would've been considered manhood. But his actions show that he was not quite there--how he his the gun, how he handled the gun and how he reacted to the aftermath by lying and running away.
Bill is almost certainly another farmhand around Dave’s age; I say this because Dave chooses Bill specifically as a point of reference for his own bravery and manhood. Bill’s particular status is not as important as Dave’s willingness to elevate himself up the totem “pole” of masculinity on the basis of his railbound escape. As for the title (and the first question), I think it refers to Dave’s conflicted self-concept; he views himself as a “man” and perfectly capable of handling some outward signifiers of manhood, like a gun. Unfortunately for Dave, he has the signifiers without achieving any state of emotional maturity or personal responsibility, and is thus “almost” a man despite the acquisition of the firearm or even his change of location at the end of the story. I think Dave’s sense of “masculinity” can is rather shallow, especially as it makes a fetish out of an implement of violence. Then again, my 2nd amendment views can be summed up as such (in opposition to “keep your hands of my guns”): “keep your bullets out of my body!”
ReplyDeleteNonetheless, Dave’s impotent rage and rebellion has a valid source. He sees outward symbols of power as largely arbitrary notions of property and the limitations on one’s ability to be independent or self-reliant when one cannot acquire these items. He can’t fully conceptualize the larger forces holding him down and, resultantly, tries to cast off the shackles he’s earned along (his debt for killing the mule) along with those that should be reasonably fled.