Richard Wright's"The Man Who Was Almost A Man"

The story on a symbolic level, in Robert Felgar's analysis, has both phallic and racial/social elements: "Aside from its obvious phallic significance, the pistol is an emblem of male strength in a wider sense; it represents power, mobility, respect." Felgar argues that the shooting of the mule was no accident, but was at least a subconscious striking out by Dave against both the white oppressor Hawkins and the enslaved part of himself:

Although Dave does not know the psychological meaning of the accident, the killing of Jenny can be interpreted on one level as Dave's striking out at the oppressor by destroying his property; but, on a more provocative level, she represents that side of himself, his slave mentality, that he would like to blot out; he does not want to be a mule for the white man (Felgar 156).

James Baldwin also interprets the sto

. . .
endorses violence as a means to liberation. Of course, beyond these psychological and Marxist analyses, the story's great strength and great sadness is that it shows the lack of meaningful options available to Dave as a young, uneducated, poor black in the South in the 1930s. He has no hope or even thought of a career, or an education, or accomplishing anything of value or significance in the world where whites rule and blacks scrape by. Clearly, on whatever level the reader chooses to interpret the story, it is evident that Wright is making a judgment of the world as it was in the 1930s in the South from the perspective of a young black male. We might condemn Dave for getting a gun, for lying to get it, for killing the mule, for running away from making up for that killing, but what would we do if we were in his position? This is certainly one of the questions Wright would like the reader to ask himself or herself. The title is significant, because it is meant to be ironic rather than literal. Dave is definitely not "almost a man." He is thoroughly deluded when he believes that the gun will make him a man. He also believes that because he is "almos a man" (Wright 107), meaning in terms of age, he deserves to have the gun he w
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1637
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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