The Man Who Was Almost a Man

“The Man Who Was Almost a Man” is a short story by African American author Richard Wright, first published in 1940 by Harper’s Bazaar magazine and again in the posthumous 1961 short story collection Eight Men. The story engages with issues of racial discrimination, oppression, and African American identity in a naturalistic writing style. It follows the struggles of Dave Saunders, a young African American man who works at a plantation in the rural South during the first decades of the 20th century. Dave is at odds with his surroundings and longs for a sense of identity and manhood.

Richard Wright was a prominent Black author who published short stories and novels during the 1930s and the 1940s that tackled racial relations in the United States. His work remains historically important, exploring the issues of racism, segregation, poverty, and inequality. Richard Wright is often associated with the Chicago Black Renaissance, a creative movement by black artists and writers that emerged in Chicago during the 1930s and spanned through the 1950s. The story’s second publication, after Wright’s death, coincides with the Civil Rights era.

This guide refers to the version of the story included in the 1961 publication of Wright’s short story collection Eight Men.

Content warning: The study guide avoids reproducing the source text’s use of the n-word and opts for the terms African American and Black for a meaningful analysis.

The story opens as 17-year-old Dave Saunders, the protagonist, finishes the day’s work and is about to head home for supper. During the summer, Dave works on Jim Hawkins’s plantation as a field hand. His feelings of alienation are immediately evident. He expresses disconnection from the community of the Black workers who “talk to him as though he were a little boy” and is determined to buy a gun to prove himself as a man (11). However, his mother keeps his wages, and he always has to ask her for money. Nevertheless, Dave is resolved in his right to own a gun as a working young man, and on his way home, he enters old Joe’s local store to look at the guns in Sears Roebuck catalog. Joe, the store owner, is initially hesitant and tells Dave that he doesn’t need a gun as he “ain’t nothing but a boy” (12). Following Dave’s pleas, Joe hands him the catalog. Dave asks to take the catalog with him, and finally, Joe suggests that he can sell Dave a gun for two dollars.

Dave returns home, keeping the catalog close to him, and his mother chides him for being late. After a while, his father—Mr. Saunders—and his little brother join them for supper. Dave is fixated on the catalog, but as his father watches him, he feels guilty and puts it away. Mr. Saunders asks him about his job on the plantation, and Dave, intimidated by his father’s rigidity, assures him it’s going well. His father advises him to be disciplined and focus on his work. Dave does not want to mention money in front of his father, so he does not ask his mother for money during dinner.

When Dave summons the courage to ask, Mrs. Saunders reproaches him, telling him he is out of his mind to waste his savings that way. She explains that they need the money for his school clothes. He keeps begging her, rationalizing that the family needs a gun. To persuade her, he says that he could give the gun to his father. She insists that a gun would be trouble for him; however, he contends once again that he is “almos a man” and has a right to own a gun (17). Finally, she yields, telling him “Lawd knows yuh don need no gun. But yer pa does” (17). She agrees to give him the money, but only if he brings the gun immediately back to the house and to his father. Excited, Dave runs back to the store.

Dave defies his mother’s instructions and does not return home. He remains out in the fields, testing his gun, holding it, and aiming it, but still without shooting it. He returns home only when everybody is asleep. When his mother asks him for the gun in the middle of the night, he lies to her, saying he hid it outside the house. First thing in the morning, Dave takes the gun from under his pillow. With the gun in his hands, Dave feels powerful for the first time and could “[k]ill anybody, black or white” (18). He thinks now that nobody could disrespect or mistreat him and that the gun would earn him prestige among other men. Dave leaves the house at dawn and heads straight to Hawkins’s plantation.

As he arrives at the fields early, Jim Hawkins tells him to hitch the mule, Jenny, and go plow a field by the woods. Dave hurries, thinking he will be able to shoot his gun alone without anybody listening or seeing him. Reaching the woods, Dave takes out the gun and tries to convince himself that he is not afraid. He aims the gun, turns his head, closes his eyes, and shoots. The sound of the shot “half deafened him” (19), and his hand hurts from the force of the heavy weapon. Following that, Jenny breaks from the plow and starts running across the field, agitated, neighing, and kicking. When Dave manages to approach the mule, he realizes Jenny is bleeding. Panic dominates him as he starts making desperate efforts to catch Jenny and stop the bleeding. Despite his attempts to treat her wound, Jenny eventually dies. Dave is sad about the mule’s death, but after a while, he buries the gun under a tree and thinks about how to explain the situation to Jim Hawkins.

Both white and Black people start gathering at the site of the incident. Hawkins and his workers gather around Dave and the dead mule while Dave’s parents and brother also arrive. Hawkins and his parents question Dave, who initially lies and says that Jenny struck herself against the plow. Everybody becomes suspicious, seeing the bullet hole on the mule’s body, and his father forcefully presses Dave to explain, “[shaking] him till his teeth rattled” (23). His mother insists that he tells the truth, and Dave eventually confesses. Hawkins laughs, calm about the incident, and asks Dave’s father for two dollars a month to compensate for the lost mule. Meanwhile, Dave will continue working in the fields without wages. Dave’s father demands the gun, and Dave lies again to avoid giving it away. His father reprimands him, threatens to beat him, and instructs him to go home. As Dave leaves, the people around him start laughing, and he feels angry.

Later that night, troubled and unable to sleep, Dave thinks of the abuse, humiliation, and disrespect he experiences in life. The crowd’s mockery wounds his pride, and “something hot seemed to turn over inside him each time he remembered how they had laughed” (25). Rage dominates him, and his mind fixates on the gun once again. He decides to leave the house, retrieve it from the fields, and shoot again.

Dave returns to the woods and retrieves the gun. This time, with determination to prove that he is a grown man, he shoots across the fields until the gun empties. Reassuring himself that he is now able to handle the gun, Dave starts back. As he moves across the fields, he stops on a ridge overlooking Hawkins’s “big white house” (26). For a moment, he wishes that he had one bullet left to shoot at the house, scare Hawkins, and prove to him that “Dave Saunders is a man” (26).

When Dave hears a train approaching down the road, he decides to escape. He rushes toward the railroad, all the time feeling the gun in his pocket. Thinking for a moment about how his life will be if he returns home, he jumps up on the train, hoping that it will lead him to a place where he can finally claim his manhood.