A Brief Summary On Rutherford

The main character of the story is a young African American man named Rutherford from a small town who moves to New Orleans in search of a job. Rutherford always takes the easy way out. In the past the church had tried to influence him into being a more conventional man, but in New Orleans he abandons those ideals and steals for a living when he finds a lack of quick work. “But arriving in the city, checking the saloons and negro bars, I found nothing. So I stole it - it came like second nature to me. My master, Reverend Peleg Chandler, had noticed this stickiness of my fingers when I was a child...” (Johnson 3). This proves that Rutherford isn’t the type of man to stick around, which is demonstrated again later in the story as he is being