Character Analysis Of The Man Who Was Almost A Man

The over-glorification of a hero is a common way to build up expectations only to have them crash down. Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “The Man That Was Used Up” uses rhetoric to build a heroic and glorified image of the human body. Rhetoric is used to persuade an audience to think and feel or act in a particular way, often through empty and ineffectual grandness in speech. In this tale, the reader experiences this persuasion in regards to the appearance and character of Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith through the narrator and the interlocutors.

Exploring the idea that all men are born sinners, O’Connor demonstrates immoral indulgences entertained by various characters. Readers are introduced to grandmother, an elderly woman whose consistent unscrupulous behavior exhibits her inner motives. Grandmother uses subtle, indirect confrontation to get her way until she is faced with The Misfit, a runaway criminal who believes that crime is a justifiable. In “A Good Man Is Hard To Find,” Flannery O’Connor uses characterization to display a loss of morals, imagery to portray evil in society, and symbolism to emphasize the struggle of obtaining grace to prove how life is nihilistic without religion.

The most obvious symbol mentioned in this story is the gun. Throughout the story, the gun is constantly shown as a symbol for power, as well as masculinity and independence. Several times throughout the course of the story the narrator states, “If anybody could shoot a gun, he could” (Wright 222). In the fields, Dave is treated as a child, and he believes that he is an adult and should be treated as once, which includes owning a gun. Dave is disillusioned by the gun, and believes that it will solve all of his problems and strengthen his weaknesses, including granting him independence. Dave fails to realize that not being able to properly operate a gun only relinquishes freedom. This can be further evidenced when Dave accidentally shoots Jenny, the mule. This situation should have put an end to Dave’s obsession with power and guns, but instead he was still fascinated, demonstrating his lack of maturity and development. Overall, the gun demonstrates the maturity, independence, and developmental level that Dave wishes to achieve, but severely lacks.

     With Dave feeling as if he is no longer a boy, he felt he deserved respect. Dave wanted the entire town to respect him but really yearned for it mostly from his parents. He worked hard in the fields and the money that he earned went to his mother. ?Ol? man Hawkins give yuh mah money yit?,? Dave said to his mother. He felt that since he did the work, then he should get the money, or at least some of it. After killing the mule in an accident, Dave also wanted to regain the respect of his boss and the other townspeople. They tormented him for his immaturity and he wanted badly to change his perception and earn his respect back. ? All the crowd was laughing now.? The townspeople were laughing at ?Dave right after he accidentally shot the mule. ?Dave really wanted to be treated like a man but it seemed as if it would never happen. ?Damn em all Nobody ever gave him anything. All he did was work. They treat me like a mule, n then they beat me.?

The Man Who Was Almost a Man, tells the story of a young seventeen year old teenager, named Dave Saunders, who finds himself struggling with the need to be taken seriously as an adult, while still being seen by his community, as merely a boy. Published in 1961 and written by Richard Wright, this short story focuses on the common struggle of young African American men in the South trying to find their identity outside of the box that the United States society put them in at the time. Dave felt that in order to prove that he was a man; in order to receive the respect he thought he deserved from Black and White Americans alike, he needed to purchase a gun. This, of course, proved to be of more harm than good, as Dave found himself incapable of using the gun correctly, and what resulted was the death of his employer’s mule. Dave then, after creating a nonsensical lie that does not convince anyone, decides to skip town in order to avoid the responsibility of taking up for his actions. When taking into consideration the story line and its relativity to the South during the 1920s, when the story is set, it’s clear to see that Dave Saunders’ story is more than what it seems to be on the surface. Dave Saunders’ story is a reflection of common coming-of-age struggles, and even more than that, the common African American struggle of trying to find power when everything surrounding you, and society as a whole, is telling you that you’re powerless; a struggle that is still very

A famous example of American literature is the short story known as “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”. The story was written by Flannery O’Connor in 1955. Flannery O’Connor was born Mary Flannery O’Connor in 1925. She was considered an important person in American literature, with credits for writing two novels, over 30 short stories and various reviews and commentaries on other written works.

In The story a good man is hard to find, a southern family takes a vacation trip to Florida. As the story progress the female characters are seen as the naïve and the weaker sex. While men are given powerful personalities and important roles. On the family’s journey they a take a turn down a dirty road which cause them to meet in an accident and they are found by the misfit and his henchmen’s. The misfit and his crew killed the entire family they spared no one, but an innocent cat. Before being killed by the Misfit the grandmother starts to have a moment of redemption at the hands of this powerful male character. This brief moment brings up on of Connor’s theme redemption, but it also hides the way how females are treated in the story. The female characters in the story are surrounded by a patriarchal system and feministic setting which concludes that they need the help of “a good man” to reach self-reflection and redemption.

Lies and lies. The lies and impulsive decisions that he made had got him into many troubles. Also, lying could be closely associated with the immaturity and childishness. Dave was desperate to buy the gun because the thought of possessing a gun. The shopkeeper Joe offered Dave his old pistol for two dollars. When Dave asked him if he could see the gun, Joe immediately denied and asked for the money. It was evident that he did not trust him, not only because he's an

n every story there is a cause and effect relationship that takes place with the main characters. In the story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” Dave didn’t think that he was being treated with enough respect, which causes him to buy a gun for himself. The whole story starts off with a dispute in the fields where Dave works and because he is only seventeen, Dave believes that he should be treated as an adult. Dave was ruled by powerlessness and fear, he thought that buying a gun would bring him to the top of the food chain but instead it turned his whole life upside down.

In “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” Richard Wright used a gun as a means for Dave to feel as though he was a man despite how others treated him. Dave sees that having a gun is his only option to gain respect and to establish himself in the community. In the short story the gun symbolizes all sorts of things. It stands for things he doesn't have such as power, respect, and independence. All of these things he is desperately seeking. This makes him see the gun as his only solution to overcome all of his struggles and to compensate for all of his shortcomings. He feels like the gun would make him a man even though he has no idea how to fire one. Dave also thinks that the gun would give him independence that he doesn't have. He somehow believes that the gun would get him out of the fields and give him bigger and better opportunities.

Characterization is an important factor in a story, mostly in literary fiction, because it controls the plot. There are different types of characterization one being direct presentation, it tells us straight out who the character is, then there is indirect presentation, where the author is telling us who the character are by their actions. For a story to be categorized as good fiction it needs to have the three criteria to develop a convincing character; first the characters are consistent in their behavior, second the characters’ words and actions have to come from motivations that are understandable and believable to the reader, and lastly they need to be lifelike. Meaning the author needs to persuade the reader that the character has a chance of existing in real life. This usually gets the attention of the reader which makes them forget that they are even reading a story. The story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright follows the three criteria in developing a convincing character. The character who follows this criteria is Dave. His behavior is consistent because he has a consent behavior of wanting to feel superior, this is what gives him his motivation in buying a gun to be superior, and the character is plausible because it shows how boys try to grow up and want to be a man and how they try to find ways with “manly” things to make them feel like a man.

A Man Who Was Almost A Man was a short story written by Richard Wright. “African-American writer and poet Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi, and published his first short story at the age of 16” (1). He’s well known for the 1940 bestseller Native Son and his 1945 autobiography Black Boy In 1927, Wright finally left the South and moved to Chicago, where he worked at a post office and also swept streets. But like so many Americans struggling with the Depression, Wright fell prey to bouts of poverty. Along the way, his frustration with American capitalism led him to join the Communist Party in 1932. Wright died in Paris, France, on November 28, 1960. “This story centers on Dave, a young African-American farm worker who is struggling to declare his identity in the atmosphere of the rural South”. The Man Who Was Almost a Man”, a story of an adolescent youth attempting to break free of adolescence and enter the universe of adulthood. Baffled by being youthful, poor, and black, Dave grapples with the pressure of needing to be a grown-up yet being seen as a youngster by the grown-up group. “Ahm gittin t' be a man like anybody else,” (878). He wants everybody look him as a grown-up man who can do this stuff himself. He sees a gun as a symbol of manhood. So, he brought a gun but, he ended up lastly on two-year debt for killing jenny. The main character although try to become a man by owning a gun but he ended up being a child. He never becomes

Frederick Douglass stated, “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will.” Meaning that, there is no progress, or in other word, no freedom without fighting and proving that one is worth of it because freedom is taken not given. Many actions taken by Frederick Douglass in “Resurrection” and Dave Saunders in “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” to prove their manhood and to get their freedom, readers understand that manhood comes through actions, but not what one possesses.

This is another great read. I remember reading a story about a man that said that it was time for him to commit to Christ. But like most people it was a part of him that wonted to live for God and then a part that did not. See two of his brothers that became Christians were called to the missionaries’ field. One of his brothers lived in African with no electricity or running water. But one thing that he realize in order to do the calling of God you must be open. God cannot use someone that is not open to what he has planned for you. No one knows what the call of God is in his or her life. You must have faith and go out and do his will.

In the introduction to his grandfather’s work, Sean Hemingway writes, “as a young man, I was impressed by the repeated emphasis in [The Sun Also Rises] on the need to pay the bill—to take care of one’s own affairs—and Jake Barnes’ ability to make his way in the world” (xii). It is this emphasis on paying the bill, on money, that acts as Hemingway’s harshest criticism of the lifestyles of American expatriates in Europe at the time. The extravagance and the excess always comes at a price. This was a lifestyle that Hemingway himself was familiar with, “Paris would prove to be an extraordinary training ground for [Ernest]. . . the bohemian lifestyle did not always rest well with him. In reading this text, one cannot, as the novel’s characters have done, ignore the importance of paying the bill. Finances and class are at the center of the character’s relationships and dynamics with each other. In chapter 7 of the novel, a conversation takes place between Brett and two of her suitors, Jake and Count Mippipopolous. The count, whose steady disposition in this narrative can only be matched by Jake himself, gives him a piece of advice. Brett says, “isn’t it wonderful . . . we all have titles. Why haven’t you a title, Jake?” and Mippipopolous interjects, “I assure you, sir . . . it never does a man any good. Most of the time it costs you money” (47). By refuting the value of a title, Hemingway criticizes the social structure of the old world, the pre-World War I world, and he makes a