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A Child or a Tiger?

 

            
            
            
            
            
            
             The need for acceptance emerges in many sectors. In the work place and places of recreation, people feel stable when others accept them. Sometimes, however, this search for significance leads people to a point where they presume no one cares. In "The Child by Tiger," written by Thomas Wolfe, Dick Prosser fells the same outcasted fate. Dick lives as a white man, but his skin color marks him as lower than whites. Consequently, Dick's status wanes somewhere in between, and he eventually loses his balance. Dick Prosser's moment of insanity is sparked by racial prejudice against him, his jealousy of Pansy's husband, and his military past.
             Racial prejudice is a major cause of Dick's moment of insanity. Dick is an African-American who possesses many qualities of the white American. The time in which the story takes place is a period of severe racial discrimination, especially toward blacks. The most prevalent attitude toward African- Americans is that they are inferior to the whites. This is evident by the referral of Dick as the "Shepperton's Negro man" (696). Regardless of how an intelligent, civilized person Dick is, he is still a black man who stays in the Shepperton's basement and is not allowed to possess a firearm even after his enlistment in the army. The young boys love him, since they are too ignorant and innocent to experience and give in to the standard of racism of their local communities and generation. "There was nothing that he did not know. We were all so proud of him" (698). Despite the kids" joy they receive from him, Dick is still inferior to the whites. On one instance, Dick is driving Mr. Shepperton to town, and a drunken man slams into them. "Lon Everett swung viciously at the Negro, smashed him in the face. Dick did not move. But suddenly the whites of his eyes were shot with red, his bleeding lips bared for a moment over the white ivory of his teeth"(699). This incident is not Dick's fault, but he is to blame simply because of his skin color.


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