Analysis Of The Man Who Was Almost A Man By Richard Wright

America is a country that values independence and along with that concept often comes the idea of “manhood.” The meaning of manhood and how to accomplish it is a topic of interest for many American youths and writers. So many stories have been written about growing up that there is a literary genre called “coming of age stories.” One such coming of age story is Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man. In Wright’s short story, character Dave Saunders grapples against forces, created by the author to imitate a life-like world, to finally gain respect and become a real man. Wright uses colloquial language to establish a setting, employs symbolism to represent the complexities of adulthood and the society Dave lives in, and gives readers insight to Dave’s maturity through story details and dialogue.

Language is the tool through which an author tells a story. In The Man Who Was Almost a Man, colloquial language is used to establish the story’s setting as one with problems parallel to Wright’s time period and life experiences. Phrases like “wall thas good,” “naw,” “down at the sto” and “ain nothin wrong” exemplifies the passage’s use of typical southern dialect. Since Dave works on what was a plantation and speaks in a very southern way, readers can infer that the Saunders family lives in the south and may not have a great education. The setting is further enhanced by how Dave addresses others. Dave’s use of “Mistah Hawkins,” “nasuh” and “yessuh” when addressing his boss shows how blacks in the south would use language to keep within societal norms of subservience. This subservience is one of the

Yet Wright leaves the hope that Dave does eventually grow up. The title The Man Who Was Almost a Man suggests that Dave is now a man, who at one time, was almost a