The Man Who Was Almost a Man

Through Dave’s quest for identity, the story explores the complicated patterns of Black masculinity in the Jim Crow South. Dave’s distress revolves around his desire to be treated as an adult and achieve manhood. As a 17-year-old young man, he is close to adulthood, but his status as a Black man limits his claims to his own individual identity. This society presented conflicting concepts of Black masculinity, all of which contributed to the oppression of Black men. On the one hand, white supremacists dehumanized African Americans by insisting they were inferior; as such, the ideal man was always considered white, putting a limit on how capable and masculine a Black man could be considered. However, another facet of dehumanization was the insistence that non-white people were more animalistic. Black men were stereotyped as hypersexual and violent, and many Jim Crow laws and cultural practices were designed to protect white women from this supposed threat. As a result, mob violence against Black men was a constant possibility–a fact present in this story’s subtext when Dave’s mother agrees that his father needs a gun. With these conflicting factors dominating African American life, Black masculinity existed in limbo, and the only way to stay safe in this society was to stay subservient, as evidenced by Dave’s father’s deference to Jim Hawkins.

Dave feels the limitations of this system; at 17, he is “almos a man” (11), but he feels acutely powerless. His lack of independence and mistreatment by others lead him to a crisis of masculinity. The political context is the underlying reason for this, but Dave feels his manhood is undermined by everybody in his environment, Black and white. One way this manifests is in his household, where his father is an intimidating patriarch. His violence and control in their household partly define Dave’s views on manhood; in his father, he sees an imposing and physically able Black man who is simultaneously dependent and succumbs to the authority of Jim Hawkins, his white employer. Through his father, Dave sees what his future could look like: forever subservient to a white landowner. Additionally, Dave feels isolated from the community of the Black workers, who also treat him as a boy. He feels the sting of humiliation when these men belittle him, and he dreams of a life where people treat him with dignity and respect.

The gun provides a solution, as Dave connects manhood with violence. For him, owning a gun garners respect because he would be able to exert violence against those who mistreat him, noting that he could “[k]ill anybody, black or white” (18). He would be able to intimidate and control others the way they control him. Pleading with his mother to give him part of his money to buy the gun, he asserts that the family needs a gun because “Yuh kin never tell whut might happen” (16), suggesting his realization that racial violence is a constant threat. When his mother admits that his father, a grown Black man, might need a gun, she confirms that Black men navigate a world of racist violence. With this, the gun provides a possible mechanism for Dave to stand on equal footing with his white oppressors; they might be able to kill him, but he could kill them, too.

However, the gun does not turn Dave into the man he wishes to become, suggesting that individual solutions are insufficient in the face of institutionalized racism. His bullets pierce the air, kill a mule, and indebt him and his family to Jim Hawkins. While Dave’s family blames him for buying and shooting the gun, Dave maintains a sense of the real culprit; at the end of the story, he dreams of shooting at Hawkins’s house, as Hawkins’s economic and social power as a white man restricts Dave’s identity and individuality. He is out of bullets, though; one man’s power is not enough to take down Jim Crow. As such, Dave’s goal to claim a sense of identity as an African American man remains unresolved in the story. The gun is unable to provide him with a sense of self, and his fixation on masculinity and power complicates and limits the ultimate quest for equality. His final escape remains ambiguous–escape is a valid means of creating a new life and finding a new identity, but the debt to Jim Hawkins, and the institutionalized racism of the American South, will endure.