The Street By Ann Petry: Summary

In the beginning of this novel, The Street, Ann Petry, describes herself as Lutie Johnson also a major character in the book living in New York with racism as well as sexism being all around her. The main theme of the beginning of the novel describes what was going on during the Harlem Renaissance during the late 1940s and how Petry lives her black urban life in Harlem. Lutie describes the wind doing “everything it could to discourage the people walking along the street” (Petry 2). She says this because the wind acts like a torpedo blocking anyone who passes such as the blacks trying to achieve their goals. She personifies the wind as someone who discourages the colored people such as people who are racist. Lutie tries to find a cheap place to stay at with her son Bub because they are living in poverty nor did they want to live with Lil, who is her father’s girlfriend because she’s a bad influence. This is also a main theme of how blacks didn’t have good employment. Lutie finds a …show more content…
Chandler house she sees so many fascinating things she had never perceived before such as having a big room. It’s shown when she “looked at the room, thinking there wasn’t any way she could say what this bedroom looked like to her when all her life she had slept on couches in living rooms…” (Petry 38). During the Harlem Renaissance, majority of whites lived in huge houses while blacks lived on the streets or in a small apartment such as Lutie did. Moreover, as Lutie makes lunch for Chandler’s friend she hears them say that they “wouldn’t have any good-looking colored wench in [their] house” (Petry 40). This is when she encounters the fact she is living in a world of racist people. This is implied when “she discovered slowly, a very strange world that she had entered” (Petry 41). These quotes describe that The Street plays an important role in society on how we treat others as well as motherhood being a major theme of this novel