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Ann Petry The Street Analysis

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In Ann Petry's novel, The Street, Lutie Johnson, a single, black mother, is trying to raise her son Bub in 1940s Harlem, New York. Like many other black inhabitants, they live on 116th Street and experience many obstacles, such as oppression and sexual exploitation. The novel highlights their daily lives and their countless struggles with racism. Throughout Harlem, racism has been a prominent factor for the majority of the population. “Of the approximately 485,000 Black New Yorkers in the early 1940s, 300,000 lived in Harlem. Segregation, a housing shortage, and a struggling working class led to crowded conditions in the city” (Stage 1). This essay explores the IB concept of culture. The suffering of Black people on the street reveals that …show more content…

It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other — jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air” (Petry 206). The Black inhabitants of Harlem felt cramped and confined because of their living conditions. They also felt isolated from the outside world and felt as if they did not belong. Similar to the city, the street also restricts blacks. Lutie continues to think to herself about her decision to move to the street and begins reflecting on the situation that she is in. Lutie thinks that, “Streets like the one she lived on were no accident. They were the North’s lynch mobs, she thought bitterly; the method the big cities used to keep Negroes in their place.From the time she was born, she had been hemmed into an ever-narrowing space, until now she was very nearly walled in and the wall had been built up brick by brick by eager white hands” (Petry 323-324). Lutie believes that the street is confining Blacks. The street limits the inhabitants from being great because it forces them to stay in those confined

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