Dave Saunders is seventeen, but in his head, he’s already light-years ahead of that. He’s tired of being treated like a kid. Tired of the "boy" labels. He wants a gun because, in his mind, a gun is the shortcut to respect. That’s the core of The Man Who Was Almost a Man, Richard Wright’s blistering short story that first hit the public in 1937 before finding a permanent home in his 1938 collection Uncle Tom's Children. It’s a messy, uncomfortable look at how poverty and racism can warp a young person's sense of self.
Honestly? It’s a hard read. Not because the language is dense—Wright uses a thick, phonetic dialect to ground us in the rural South—but because you can see the train wreck coming from the very first page.
Dave thinks power is something you can buy for two dollars. He’s wrong.
What Actually Happens in The Man Who Was Almost a Man
The plot is deceptively simple. Dave Saunders works on a plantation owned by a man named Jim Hawkins. He’s surrounded by adults who don’t take him seriously and a mother who, while trying to protect him, ultimately treats him like a subordinate. Dave convinces his mother to give him two dollars to buy a pistol from a local shopkeeper named Joe. He tells her it’s for protection, for the family. In reality, it’s for his ego.
He gets the gun. He hides it.
The next morning, he takes it out to the fields. He wants to feel that kick. He wants to feel like a man. But when he finally gathers the nerve to pull the trigger, everything goes sideways. He accidentally shoots Jenny, Mr. Hawkins’s mule. It’s a disaster. Dave tries to bury the gun, tries to lie about how the mule died, but the truth comes out.
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The ending isn't a redemption arc. It's a flight. Instead of facing the debt—the two dollars a month he’s ordered to pay for the rest of his young life to cover the mule—Dave digs up the gun, fires the remaining bullets, and hops a northbound train.
The Tragic Confusion of Masculinity
The title The Man Who Was Almost a Man is a bit of a trick. Was Dave ever close to manhood? Or was he just chasing a violent caricature of it?
Richard Wright was obsessed with the idea of "The South." Not just as a place, but as a psychological cage. For a Black teenager in the Jim Crow era, "manhood" wasn't something granted by age. It was something constantly denied by the law, the economy, and social etiquette. Dave sees the white men around him holding power through ownership and violence. Naturally, he concludes that owning a weapon—the literal tool of violence—will bridge the gap between his current state and the respect he craves.
It’s a specific kind of desperation.
He doesn't want the gun to hurt people, necessarily. He wants it because of how it makes him feel when it's tucked into his pants. He thinks it’s a totem. But as critics like Yoshinobu Hakutani have pointed out, Wright is showing us that Dave’s "growth" is stunted by the very environment he’s trying to master. He hasn't learned responsibility; he’s only learned how to mimic the outward signs of power.
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Why the Ending Still Sparks Arguments
People argue about that train all the time. Is it a victory? Dave escapes the plantation. He refuses to be a "mule" himself, working off a debt for years to come. In one sense, it’s an act of rebellion. He’s heading North, much like Wright himself did, seeking a world where he might actually become a whole person.
But look at what he takes with him.
He takes the gun. He doesn't take a plan. He doesn't take money. He takes the same instrument of destruction that got him into this mess. He hasn't actually matured; he’s just moved his immaturity to a new location. Wright isn't giving us a "happily ever after." He's giving us a "what now?"
The tragedy is that Dave thinks he’s escaping into manhood, but he’s really just running away from the consequences of his actions. That’s the "almost" in the title. He has the bravado, but zero of the accountability that actually defines an adult.
The Raw Power of Wright's Prose
If you read the original text, the dialect is heavy. "Mebbe I kin buy a gun," Dave thinks. Wright doesn't do this to make Dave look uneducated for the sake of a joke. He does it to immerse you in Dave’s internal world. You’re trapped in his perspective.
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You feel his sweat. You feel his shame when the crowd laughs at him after he confesses to killing the mule. That laughter is the turning point. It’s the moment Dave realizes that even with a gun, he’s still a joke to them. That’s why he has to leave. He can’t stay in a place where his "manhood" was DOA.
Actionable Insights from Dave’s Story
Reading The Man Who Was Almost a Man isn't just a literary exercise. It offers some pretty blunt truths about how we view maturity and power today.
- Symbols vs. Substance: Dave thought the gun made the man. In a modern context, we see this with status symbols—cars, clothes, titles. If the "thing" is all you have, you haven't actually grown; you've just decorated your insecurity.
- The Debt Trap: The moment Mr. Hawkins tells Dave he has to pay five dollars a month for the mule, Dave is essentially sold back into a form of indentured servitude. Recognizing when a system is designed to keep you in debt is a crucial part of navigating the world.
- The Necessity of Accountability: Real maturity starts when the "mule dies." Dave’s failure to own his mistake is what keeps him "almost" a man. Learning to face the music—even when the music is loud and ugly—is the only way to actually cross that threshold.
If you're looking to dive deeper into Wright's work, don't stop here. Move on to Black Boy or Native Son. You’ll see the same themes—the hunger for identity, the crushing weight of systemic oppression, and the frantic search for a way out—played out on a much larger, even more devastating scale.
The story of Dave Saunders is a warning. It’s a reminder that you can’t shoot your way into respect, and you can’t run away from yourself, even on a fast-moving train.