On The Sidewalk Bleeding Stereotypes

In the short story On The Sidewalk Bleeding, written by Evan Hunter, a crucial message is that we should not allow stereotypes to determine our identity. The story portrays the struggles of a 16-year-old boy known as Andy. He is part of a notorious street gang, the "Royals". One night, Andy got into a rumble with a rival gang, the "Guardians". The scuffle did not end well, and it resulted in Andy's stabbing. As he lay on the ground, he thought about how his life hadn't been about being Andy but about being a Royal. Andy was stereotyped many times throughout the story, but all those stereotypes did not reflect Andy and who he was. For example, when the couple refused to help him at the sight of his jacket, they forgot to see that Andy wasn't

Andy was just a kid who got caught up in the wrong crowd. Towards the moments of his death, he saw that being a Royal wasn't as important as being Andy, which proves that he's matured. When Andy is lying on the sidewalk, we see Andy's internal struggle as he realizes he is dying. He begins thinking about Laura and how this lifestyle isn't worth it. This scene showcases his growth, he went from being a gang member of the Royals to realizing that being himself is more important than the gang. “I don't want to die, I haven't lived yet” signifies that he doesn't want to die because he has not lived as Andy but as a Royal, he spent all his life being a Royal instead of Andy. Him being able to realize this signifies that he sees his mistakes on how he wasn't able to be himself but sadly he was only able to see this when he had to face the consequences. Realizing that the life youve been living is a lie takes a great amount of strength and bravery. It’s important for the readers to think about how Andy had grown and come to terms with all his mistakes, it lets us recognize how Andy was only a kid, a troubled up kid who followed the wrong path. The realization that Andy had understood his mistakes and was ready to live life being himself is what makes his death much more heartbreaking as he had finally discovered who he should've spent his life being, but by then it was too

Seeing how different people interpreted the jacket and how it symbolized different things at different times. When Andy first receives the jacket, he is filled with a sense of belonging to the royals. He found comfort in the jacket when it represented his loyalty and participation in the gang, but he starts to question when the jacket becomes a symbol of his internal conflict. He wants to stay true to himself and take off the jacket, but at the same time, he wants to stay loyal to the gang. The guardians weren't seeing Andy as the enemy, they were seeing the jacket, and they didn't see it as the stabbing of Andy but the stabbing of the jacket. The jacket ended up fabricating his entire identity. The couple saw him as a hooligan, but they were seeing the jacket, not Andy. “Had they stabbed Andy, or had they stabbed the jacket?” That statement symbolizes the conflict between the two gangs. They didn't care about Andy, and they let their hatred for the jacket determine his fate. This shows how easily you can be stripped of your identity by other people, but it also represents how one can lose their sense of self by conforming to something, in our case, a jacket. The jacket depicts his struggle with conforming to the jacket but not wanting to be seen as the