Short Story Of Dave In The Man Who Was Almost A Man

People are stereotyped based on their looks, personality, skin color, place of birth, living arrangements, grades, etc. While stereotyping is common in the world today, people want to break free of this. They want to be their own independent person. They want to be authentic, original. So, when a person is placed into a certain “box” they will often try to break free of this. Such was the case for the young man, Dave in the short story, “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright. Dave was a hardworking boy, who just wanted to be seen and respected as a man. Another person who tried to break free from their constrains was a young woman in the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson. Living with a mental condition and forced to live at home, drove this woman to madness and she tried to escape, but was not sure how. People are often placed into boxes of who they should be and they don’t want to be placed there so they try to break out; however, many do not know how to go about shattering their stereotypes, so they are left with confusion and mayhem in the end.
In the short story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man,” Dave the young seventeen-year-old struggles to find what being a man is all about. “Ahm seventeen. Almost a man” (Wright, 1). In the first paragraph, there is seen an inner struggle of …show more content…
This story brings out the ideology of that time period, written during the early- to mid- nineteen century where woman were practically forced to stay at home. At the end of the story, the women is seen creeping around her room and she believes she is free at last; “I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Stetson, 656)! This woman believed that the paper was her oppressor and by getting rid of it and gained freedom, but in reality she was still confined to her