THE MAN WHO WAS ALMOST A MAN, 1939

By Richard Wright
“Afro-american perspective”

Naturalism
Although much a typical coming-of-age story, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” also depicts
Dave’s greater struggles with racism and poverty, and it is an exemplary piece of naturalist writing.
Naturalists such as Wright incorporated stinging social criticism into their stories and novels by
pitting their characters against social, economic, or environmental forces that they can’t control. In
making Dave a victim of racial oppression, for example, Wright attacks whites’ lingering power
over the lives of blacks. Like his parents, Dave is stuck in a life of subservience to men such as Mr.
Hawkins, Joe the shopkeeper, and other financially secure whites and will never have the education
or money necessary to achieve his full potential. He consequently believes that only brute power—
the ability to shoot a gun—will win him the respect he wants. Dave’s desire to own a gun thus
reflects a greater desperation and psychological need to establish himself in the community as an
empowered human being rather than a mere field hand.
Dave’s struggle to overcome the uncontrollable forces pressing down on him speaks for all young
people whom society has overlooked and dismissed. He therefore becomes Wright’s unlikely hero,
a young man who refuses to cave under overwhelming social forces while simultaneously shirking
his debts and commitments like an irresponsible child. Even though readers know that Dave will
probably never find the success, independence, or power he craves, the mere fact that he’s willing to
risk striking out on his own redeems him and makes him more than “almost a man.”

Historical Context
Dave’s struggle with racial oppression reflects the broader African American struggle to win more
rights, freedoms, and opportunities since the end of the Civil War. Although many black Americans
had pushed for equality and economic leverage in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the quest
for civil rights didn’t become a coordinated movement until the early twentieth century. Tired of
second-class citizenship, African American activists such as W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and
Thurgood Marshall began promoting strategies that would chip away at white dominance, just as
the frustrated adolescent Dave Saunders finally decides to empower himself when he can no longer
stand be ridiculed. Rather than indiscriminately striking out at those in power as Dave fantasizes,
however, early civil rights leaders worked to change the oppressive social and legal systems. Only
in the 1950s and 1960s—when this story was published—did civil rights activists actually rebel by
quietly refusing to comply with white Americans’ humiliating expectations.
Many factors conspired to extend the oppressive exploitation of blacks that slavery had established.
For African Americans stuck farming small parcels of land owned by white overseers,
sharecropping proved only slightly better than forced labor. Gang violence, lynchings, and Jim
Crow laws that segregated blacks from whites also worked to keep blacks “in their place.” Slowly,
however, prevailing social patterns changed, especially between World War I and World War II,
when hundreds of thousands of blacks fled their destitute lives in the South for better opportunities
in the North. Dave’s sudden flight at the end of the story mimics this so-called Great Migration.
Seen in this light, his nighttime escape thus becomes a symbolic renunciation, a turning from the
agrarian servitude that marked the past and a staunch refusal to accept the unfair conditions that
kept families mired in poverty and robbed individual lives of hope and promise.
Local Dialect
Wright’s use of local dialect provides unique voices for the story’s black characters. Dave and his
parents speak with an almost slurring drawl, dropping letters and syllables from their words, in
contrast to the white-skinned Joe and Mr. Hawkins, who use more standard English. Although
Wright’s use of dialect often makes reading the story difficult, dialect gives the characters vitality
and dimension. Readers can actually visualize Mrs. Saunders chastising Dave, for example, when
she exclaims, “Lawd, chil, whut’s wrong wid yuh?” Incorporating different dialects into the story
also lends a ring of authenticity to Wright’s portrayal of a rural southern community in the early
twentieth century, a community in which whites and blacks coexist on unequal terms. Dialect helps
separate these two groups, not only reflecting varying degrees of education but also highlighting
inequalities in lifestyle and standards of living. As a result, readers are better able to understand
Dave’s frustration working on a plantation that affords no opportunities. If he doesn’t escape, he’ll
undoubtedly work in the fields for the rest of his life, trapped, just like his father.

Important Quotations Explained

1. Could kill a man with a gun like this. 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.
Withdrawing the pistol from underneath his pillow, Dave marvels at the gun’s potential
power and capabilities. Even though he doesn’t actually know how to use it, the pistol gives
Dave the sense of power and masculinity he desperately wants yet can’t seem to muster on
his own. Dave’s musings, however, also reveal a darker desire to strike back at those he feels
have abused and ridiculed him. He presumably daydreams not only about killing the other
black plantation workers who laughed at him in the story’s opening line, but also the
empowered whites who unfairly control his and the other black workers’ lives. Wright uses
Dave in this way to explore the destructive influence of racism and lack of economic
opportunity on the lives of black Americans. Although Dave never actually kills anyone, the
fact that he runs away with the gun at the end of the story suggests that he still harbors the
desire for power and maybe even revenge. Dave’s musings may reflect his potential just as
much as his desire: he could kill if he had a gun in his hand. These thoughts are probably
nothing more than the fantasies of a typical adolescent boy, but Wright leaves open the
possibility for future violence and never resolves the issue.

2. Ahead the long rails were glinting in the moonlight, stretching away, away to somewhere,
somewhere where he could be a man.

Dave’s sudden decision to hop on a train comes as an unexpected ending to the typical
coming-of-age story and reflects Dave’s deeper struggle with the oppressive social and
economic forces of the day. Although Dave’s wrangling to purchase the pistol and then
covering up Jenny’s death highlight the struggles of growing up that all teenagers face, the
fact that he runs away suggests that Dave also feels oppressed and strangled in his
community. He needs more than mere recognition and acceptance—he needs opportunities
that field work can’t provide. Running away allows Dave to exert control over his own
destiny for the first time in his life, despite the fact that he’s irresponsibly abandoning his
family, debts, and commitments like a child. Trying to take control of his life in this way
without serious regard to the consequences or future, therefore, makes Dave only “almost a
man.”