- Biographical Information
Ann Petry was born in 1908 in the state of Connecticut. She was among the first African American women authors in the United States. Petry was born of a poor black family. It was not until she was a bit older that her family was able to attain some economic stability. Her father was a pharmacist while her mother engaged in business. Being from the minority, Petry experienced different elements of racism and discrimination in her own society. In her article “My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience” which was published in 1946, Petry explains some of the incidences of racism that she experienced in her life (Boyle 16). For example, there was a time during her tender ages that she was not allowed to sit on the same bench as white children at school. She also explains in this article that there were instances when she was humiliated in the classroom environment by being asked to read a section of the slave Edgar Poe short story “The Gold-Bug.” Petry’s father tried to shield his daughters from discrimination.
As it came to be apparent afterwards her father had memoirs of incidences where there were white teachers who had publicly refused to teach his daughters. Despite the challenges of discrimination that Petry experienced her family instilled values in her that assured her that she can be anything she wanted to be irrespective of her gender and the social norms that were biased against black people.
- General Summary
The protagonist in Petry’s story is Johnson. Johnson is a black man who is poor. He and his wife are factory laborers. This means that the family is not financially small. In addition to the poor life that Johnson continues to face, he continues to wrestle with racism that his engulfed his society. One of the interesting things about Johnson is the fact that his family has instilled some values in him. His family has taught him that it is not manly to beat a woman. Despite the insults that he gets from a lady, he is not supposed to hit her. Petry describes this phenomenon as a social sheet that is winded around his life and prevents him from not acting when it is necessary. His family values continue to make him be in challenging situations (Lubin 27). For example, he is late for work and his boss who is a woman yells at him at some point refers to him as nigga. Johnson is very angry but there is nothing he can do because she is a woman. He wishes that he could hit her so hard such that her lipstick would be smeared all over her lips, face, and nose.
On his way home Johnson goes at a coffee shop and when he is the next in line, the woman serving coffee says that coffee is out for a while(Ervin 43). This is because she does not want to serve Johnson because he is black man. Again Johnson wishes that he can slap the lady so hard such that her lipstick would splash on her nose. At this point Johnson’s temper is so high that he can no longer confine himself to the values of his family that prevented him from hitting a woman. When Johnson gets home, his wife begins to yell at him and calling him for no mere reason. She even goes ahead to call him names just because he accidently sat on her work uniforms that were hanging on the chair. Johnson could no longer be held in the social sheet that prevented him from acting. He lifted his fist and hit his wife so hard that her lipstick smeared all over her face and nose. The take home message in Petry’s novel is that there is a need for us to move from our social norms and confines so that we can be able to act on the things that bother us or what we aspire to become.
- Relationship to Today’s Society
Petry’s story is relevant to society today. There are different challenges in society that make us not to realize the optimal dreams and aspirations. For example, some people might be discouraged from pursuing some things in life due to the fact that they hail from poor backgrounds. However, the discouragements are comparable to the sheet that was winded around Johnson’s life. It is important that we step out of the sheet and pursue what we believe to the optimal choice. We should not settle for sub-optimal choices for the mere reason that we do not want to get out of our comfort zone.
- Personal Evaluation
This novel provides moral courage to the readers. This short story brings out the idea that nobody can live our lives. We are therefore responsible for our own lives. Unless we take action on things that bother us, the fact remains that we will continue to struggle and grapple over the problems. We should not only identify the problems that face us but should be the source of the solutions to those problems.
- Terminology
Lipstick (n) – metaphor for women
Grapple (v) – suffer from
Plant laborer (n) – unskilled workers in factory.
Racism (n) – segregation based on race
Winding (v) – tying around something
Smear (v) – spread something such as oil on a surface
Uniform (v) – special clothing in a school, work or other designed area
Discern (v) – decide
Summoned (v) – be invited for interrogation or instructions.
Works Cited
Boyle, Elizabeth. Reading America: new perspectives on the American novel. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008. Print.
Ervin, Hazel Arnett . Ann Petry's short fiction: critical essays. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Print.
Lubin, Alex. Revising the blueprint: Ann Petry and the literary left. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. Print.
