Not a boy, not yet a man.

Unprepared boys with weapons acting like men are a reoccurring theme in stories this semester. We most likely remember the small boy leading a platoon of brutally injured soldiers through the woods, disillusioned with the grandeur created by a wooden sword in Ambrose Bierce’s “Chickamauga.” Twain wrote of a Champaign of young men during the Civil War who were untrained to hold up their end in battle. They spent most of the story retreating and fleeing from any form of danger. These men adorned soldier suits to hide the fact that they were just sons, or brothers, fighting for what society thought they should do. This week reading of “Almos’ a Man” by Richard Wright and “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner feature lead characters who like the “soldiers” mentioned before hand are far to young to take on the burdens they cast upon them by others or themselves.

In “Almos’ a Man” it is easy to spot this connection right away. David buys a gun. His mother only gives him the money because she thinks David will purchase the gun and then give it to his father. David, however, is to in love with the idea of being able to “Kill anybody, black er white.” Instead of surrendering the gun to his father David sneaks off with it in the morning and goes to the Hawkin’s planation where he hitches a mule to a plow and rides to a far away field where he figures he can play with his gun and feel like a man all day long. David as never shot a gun before and apparently had no idea about kick back (despite the fact that I am certified to carry a concealed weapon in the state of Oregon, I know little to nothing about gun terms) and with the first shot found himself laying on the ground. David’s fall however, was the least of his worries, because he totally shot the mule! And it died! David is in a real pickle because now everybody will know he was playing with a gun in a field.

After returning home muleless his parents and the owner of the mule, Mr. Hawkins wish to know where Jenny, the mule is. In a round about way David finally admits to killing Jenny with this statement, “Ah swear to Gawd, Ah didn’t go t kill the mule, Mistah Hawkins!” He only says he never meant to do it. Not that he did it. Anyways the whole time Mister Hawkins is pressing David about the dead mule a crowd is gathered. The crowd, presumably all white, are laughing at David squirm and cry. This makes David mad.

I have to admit I feel sorry for David in this scene, he is after all a boy, albeit it almost a man, and he is probably really freaked out. I doubt that a boy in another other class or race would have acted differently under these circumstances.

So back to the people laughing, David’s blood is boiling. If there is one thing that doesn’t make a boy feel like a man it is getting mocked by a crowd of people for the misfortune you caused when you were trying to act like a man. Later that night David, enraged with visions of the spectators laughing faces and the debt he must pay to Mr. Hawkins, decided to play with his gun again but David as far more to loose this time. I am a little unclear on what exactly happens at the end of the story but I got the impression that David was going to go try and scare Mr. Hawkins in an attempt to win back some of his integrity and get out of paying the mule killing fine.

The gun gave David a false sense of manhood. He was completely unprepared for the reality of a gun. He probably had an idea of how glamorous it would be to have a gun, to be tough, to be powerful, to be everything a young black boy was considered not. However, at the end of the day David was still a child for not realizing that actions have consequence. Much like the young boy in Chickamauga, who finds his mother dead after gleefully playing war sergeant to a bunch of faceless men.

Sarty is armed with a different type of weapon highly burdensome for a boy of his age and that is the truth. Sarty knows the truth about his fire, that he is a bad man, that he is an arsonist. This is a complicated place to be for in telling the truth he risks hurting his Father and by not telling on his Father he risks other people getting hurt. Sarty behaves as his Father instructs him to behave, like a man, who is loyal to his family, with a head slap. Sarty has, “the terrible handicap of being young, the light weight of a few years, just heavy enough to prevent his soaring free of the world as it seemed to be ordered but not too heavy to keep him footed solid in it, to resist it and try to change the course of events.”

Much like the other boys discussed today, they lie in this weird in between stage where pressures may be getting put on them to act wiser than their years. This forcing boys into the role of manhood by means of power, usually created with a form of violence, never results in good things.