The Man Who Was Almost a Man

The story explores the young protagonist’s quest for an identity amid Classism, Racism, and Economic Oppression. Richard Wright begins exploring this theme through the story’s structure. The narration alternates between the third person, representing the authorial voice, and the first person, which conveys the protagonist’s perspective. The vernacular used by the main character provides him with a distinct and authentic voice that contrasts the author’s more neutral tone, as well as with Hawkins’s more proper diction. The sharp difference between different characters’ speech patterns establishes the classist and racist social hierarchy of the Jim Crow South.

The text immediately establishes Dave’s internal crisis: Reaching adulthood, he desperately wants to claim his masculinity. This quest is symbolized by his obsession with the gun, a symbol of power, masculinity, and violence. Dave believes that owning a gun will earn him respect among other men, and his desire reveals the social environment he inhabits. The setting of an early-20th-century rural southern community encapsulates the myriad external forces that control and impact Dave, like poverty, racial segregation, and white supremacy. For Dave, the gun is a way for him to assert his masculinity in the face of these oppressive forces. establishing the themes of Black Masculinity and Violence and Racial Discrimination and the Quest for Power. The irony in the story’s title asserts that Dave does not achieve manhood, even though he succeeds in acquiring and firing a gun. By the end of the story, the protagonist’s sense of self remains fragile; the gun does not, ultimately, lead him to his goal. This outcome highlights the difficulty of overcoming the ways white supremacy emasculates Black men.

When Dave decides to go to Joe’s store and buy a gun, his courage subsides when he sees the old white man. Despite Joe’s friendly and accommodating manner, his presence intimidates Dave. Joe knows that Dave’s mother keeps his wages, and he laughs at his assertion that he is almost a man. Joe’s character illustrates the difference in social status between the men, emphasizing the racial and economic dominance of white men in the Jim Crow South. Joe is the one who can sell Dave a gun, highlighting how he already embodies this society’s masculine ideal. The scene also highlights how economic status is central to independence and individuality. Dave lacks agency and autonomy; despite being a worker, he has no control over his money.

Dave does not have a strong bond with his home and community. He feels his family doesn’t understand him, and he is also detached from the community of Black workers, who undermine his masculinity. The Saunders household has a patriarchal structure, characterized by respect and adherence to his father’s authority. However, Mr. Saunders’s control is limited because he is, in turn, controlled by the plantation owner, Hawkins, who is at the top of the hierarchy as both a white man and a landowner. The juxtaposition between Mr. Saunders’s strictness at home and his position as a passive worker at the end of the story contributes to Dave’s masculine distress. Bob Saunders is often violent and dwells on Dave’s job efficiency, concerned about maintaining good relations with Hawkins. Mrs. Saunders cares for his education and wants to keep Dave out of trouble. She only allows him to buy a gun when they agree that he will give it to his father, which demonstrates the family’s patriarchal hierarchy. Dave is lonely and never expresses his turmoil to the people who surround him. His inner monologue emphasizes his crisis as an individual and stresses his alienation.

The scenes with Dave handling the gun illustrate his quest for power and establish his deeper ideas on manhood. As the object that symbolizes all that he strives for, Dave keeps the gun to himself, hiding and guarding it from everybody. His preoccupation with the gun suggests that he tries to form his identity against all others, Black and white, who undermine and mistreat him. However, still a young and innocent man, he does not know how to use it, and he appears intimidated and scared. In his first attempt to shoot, he turns his head and closes his eyes, an act that emphasizes that he is not yet ready to enter a world of violence. When he accidentally kills the mule, it is a turning point. Jenny becomes an innocent victim of careless violence, signaling Dave’s loss of naivety. As the only living thing that Dave can harm, Jenny is a potent symbol; mules are sterile and are bred explicitly to perform labor. While Dave thinks firing the gun will prove his dominance, it ultimately proves that his only power is over impotent animals. Dave remains at the bottom of the power hierarchy.

Jim Hawkins, the plantation owner, is not described as overtly violent. However, he exerts total control over the Black community as the plantation owner. He is characterized by Mr. Saunders’s deference to him even at home, as well as how he speaks to his laborers. Hawkins has no intention of just treatment and exploits this incident for his own benefit by putting Dave’s family into debt–Dave notes that he would need to work for two years without wages to pay for Jenny. The scene describes the exploitation of Black workers through a system that keeps them perpetually oppressed and disenfranchised while perpetuating the authority of white men. Hawkins’s authority illuminates the political and social context that shapes Dave’s life and his community members more broadly. This dominance is represented by the way Dave’s fellow Black laborers align themselves with Hawkins, mocking Dave for his actions.

Dave realizes that his plan for achieving masculine power has failed, and he is condemned to be forever subordinate to another man. With this, he decides leaving his family is the only way out. The gun is the only object that gives a purpose and drives his journey. At the end of the story, when he finally manages to shoot properly, he feels ready and determined to begin the lonely journey in quest of his identity. His effort, though, remains fragile as he can only shoot bullets into the air, changing nothing. The scene where Dave stands overlooking Jim Hawkins’s “big white house” suggests that he still measures himself against the dominant standards of masculinity (26). He wishes he could scare Hawkins and prove that he is also a man, equal to him, but the gun is empty. The racial hierarchy remains unchallenged.

Ultimately, Dave’s search for manhood remains a simultaneous quest for humanity and self-actualization. His final act is an attempt to escape and resist all oppression, paralleling the way Wright lived in voluntary exile. In his 1951 essay “I Choose Exile,” Wright defended his decision to leave the United States, claiming that after 38 years of fighting racist oppression, the only way to be free was to leave the United States. With this, a theme across many of Wright’s works is the value of escape. In “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” racism restricts Dave as a human being. However, his obsession with manhood and masculinity renders his quest dubious; the narrative does not offer a resolution for Dave, and he ultimately carries an empty gun into his future. This factor reinforces the gun’s ambiguity as a means of power. The story’s end stresses that Dave is still navigating a dehumanizing and violent world, and Dave has internalized an idea of manhood based on dominant models of masculinity that limit his consciousness as a Black man. Climbing the train and escaping, he can only hope that it will lead him to a place where he will finally be able to feel like a man and a human being.