Life is all about making choices. Deciding whether or not you are making the right or wrong choice is what determines the outcome of your situation. These four literary works all have that problem in common. The first piece of literature is a poem called “We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks. The next two are both short stories, one is called “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright and the other is called “Eveline” by James Joyce. The fourth one is a piece of artwork titled “Touch of Pink” by Geoffrey Holder. The characters in each story are faced with similar life changing decisions to either comply with society’s expectations of them or take the risk of rebellion and leave their type of environment. The best decision for each character
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Eveline made a promise to her mother before she died to always take care of her family and make sure everything in the house is in order (Joyce 6). She always does what is expected of her whether it is cooking, cleaning or working all day at a job she despises just to give her entire paycheck to her father. In the story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man”, Dave lived his life as a sharecropper. He was treated like a slave the way he was expected to perform hard labor all day on his master’s plantation for a measly two dollars a month. There were very few options for Dave because his life was already made up for him, and he had no choice but to accept it and comply with the rules and regulations that were created for African Americans living in the south during the 1950s. If he did rebel, he would have to face the consequences. In the poem “We Real Cool”, there is a stereotypical type of expectation that is expressed about the youth of this generation. The good kids are the ones who stay in school and always make the right choices, but to society they are …show more content…
In “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” Dave felt like he was getting treated like a child and was not getting any respect, so he decided that he wanted to own a gun to prove that he was a man. Dave’s immature and irresponsible actions of shooting the mule put himself in a horrible predicament. Because of his actions, Dave is required to work two years with no pay in order to pay back his master for the dead mule. Now Dave is faced with a life changing decision to do what is right and deal with his consequences of continuing to work off his debt or choose to rebel against his master. He, in fact, runs away, “away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man” (Wright 6). His decision was not only wrong, but also selfish. Dave put himself and his family at risk by fleeing. Although he managed to escape, his family will now receive the burden of paying off his debt and probably perform more hard labor on the plantation since Dave is no longer there to do his portion of the work as a sharecropper. The danger Dave can face not only because he is a runaway, but because he is a young African American man with a gun in his possession. The chance of him making it to Illinois on that train is very unlikely because if he is found he could be captured or worse
Eveline made a promise to her mother before she died to always take care of her family and make sure everything in the house is in order (Joyce 6). She always does what is expected of her whether it is cooking, cleaning or working all day at a job she despises just to give her entire paycheck to her father. In the story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man”, Dave lived his life as a sharecropper. He was treated like a slave the way he was expected to perform hard labor all day on his master’s plantation for a measly two dollars a month. There were very few options for Dave because his life was already made up for him, and he had no choice but to accept it and comply with the rules and regulations that were created for African Americans living in the south during the 1950s. If he did rebel, he would have to face the consequences. In the poem “We Real Cool”, there is a stereotypical type of expectation that is expressed about the youth of this generation. The good kids are the ones who stay in school and always make the right choices, but to society they are …show more content…
In “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” Dave felt like he was getting treated like a child and was not getting any respect, so he decided that he wanted to own a gun to prove that he was a man. Dave’s immature and irresponsible actions of shooting the mule put himself in a horrible predicament. Because of his actions, Dave is required to work two years with no pay in order to pay back his master for the dead mule. Now Dave is faced with a life changing decision to do what is right and deal with his consequences of continuing to work off his debt or choose to rebel against his master. He, in fact, runs away, “away to somewhere, somewhere where he could be a man” (Wright 6). His decision was not only wrong, but also selfish. Dave put himself and his family at risk by fleeing. Although he managed to escape, his family will now receive the burden of paying off his debt and probably perform more hard labor on the plantation since Dave is no longer there to do his portion of the work as a sharecropper. The danger Dave can face not only because he is a runaway, but because he is a young African American man with a gun in his possession. The chance of him making it to Illinois on that train is very unlikely because if he is found he could be captured or worse