The Men We Reaped Analysis
Jesmyn Ward's "The Men We Reaped", is a heart-wrenching coming of age memoir and a mourning song, as she takes us on a journey through her childhood and upbringing in a poor Mississippi family. We experience the violent, tragic, and premature deaths in, a span of four years of five young men, all of whom she loved and cared for, to drugs, accidents, suicide, and the unfortunate disadvantages that follow many black men who live in severe poverty. Ward, while dealing with the loss of the young men, begins to question why she was able to conquer the obstacles that were predetermined for her while the men and others were not? Why must black Americans suffer? Why did these young men have to die? Why must America continue to dehumanize blacks? But
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it wasnt until she got the courage to relive the grief that she experienced while mourning that she realized the truth. The truth that had not been obvious to her. The truth that these young men died because of who they were and where they were from. Each of their backgrounds consisted of a past of racism and severe poverty that fostered drug addiction and the breaking up of families, as well as relationships. But in the end "The Men We Reaped", tells the story of Ward's own salvation thanks to her mother's grit and sacrifice, her own love for the people around her, and the power of literature to liberate the soul. Bildungsroman or coming of age story, is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. Therefore, a characters change and growth is tremendously important. According to the article "The Bildungsroman. Critical Survey of Long Fiction", Richard Hauer Costa writes, " The traditional bildungsroman is often an autobiographical novel depicting adolescent self-development and the educative experiences of youth. The modern feminist bildungsroman concentrates on crises in which the female protagonist finds herself facing problematical dilemmas with no assurance, if they persist, of safe passage. A woman awakens in her late twenties or early thirties to what Bonnie Hoover Braedlin calls “the stultification and fragmentation of a personality devoted not to self-fulfillment and awareness, but to a culturally determined, self-sacrificing, self-effacing existence.” These crises and concomitant struggles for oneness in cultures that fragment women into accepted roles provide the central themes of the feminist bildungsroman. Scholars have divided feminist bildungsromans into those that convey a “social quest” and those that focus on a “spiritual quest.” The distinguishing factors are, with the former, a search for identity in the socioeconomic sphere and, with the latter, a journey involving a “transcendent deity”(pp.7-8).
Throughout the novel, Ward gives us a unique perspective into her life as well as the lives of the young men who tragically passed away.
She first tells the story of her town of Delisle, Mississippi and it's history, as well as tell the story of her community in which she grew up in. Then she revisits the lives and stories of the young men but ironically,she revisits and explains each death backwards in time,starting with the most recent death to the earlier death of her younger brother. This is her story as it is the stories of the young men. By reliving and writing about her story, family ,and community,she will learn more about who she is, as well as learn more about the lives of her community and family. Writing this memoir will allow her to understand the birth of racism,why the men died, and also the "economic inequality and pased public and personal responsibility sour and spread here"(Ward pp.21). Writing this story will allow Ward to come of age by finally understanding why these men, and most importantly her brother died. Writing this memoir will allow her to understand that she survived in order to let others know about the truth of how southern blacks in America live and suffer and how America treats and views them as
nothing.
In her memoir, we get a glimpse into Wards' parent's struggling, and in the end, failed marriage. She also talks about how her mother struggled as a single black woman raising four children on her own. But at one point, as she was developing through adolescents and becoming and young woman, Ward resented her mother and began to blame her as the reason why she hated herself as well as why the world hated her. Ward's mother was the mother figure in her own family as she was growing up, because her own mother had to work two to three jobs in order to support her seven children. Her father had left her mother to be with another woman. A cycle that would have also destroyed her future family. At a young age, Wards mother had to quickly grow up and learn how to be an adult. Because of this, she became isolated and withdrawn. "She resented the strength she had to cultivate, the endurance demanded of women in the rural South. She recognized it's injustice even as a child. This made her quiet and withdrawn"(Ward pp.32). Ward's mother knew of the inequalities that she would face not only as as African-American living in the south, but as an African-American woman at that. But despite the challenges that she faced, she still dreamed of a better life for herself. She had a rare opportunity of going to California to go to school, an opportunity she knew that not many black woman were lucky enough to have. But she
it wasnt until she got the courage to relive the grief that she experienced while mourning that she realized the truth. The truth that had not been obvious to her. The truth that these young men died because of who they were and where they were from. Each of their backgrounds consisted of a past of racism and severe poverty that fostered drug addiction and the breaking up of families, as well as relationships. But in the end "The Men We Reaped", tells the story of Ward's own salvation thanks to her mother's grit and sacrifice, her own love for the people around her, and the power of literature to liberate the soul. Bildungsroman or coming of age story, is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. Therefore, a characters change and growth is tremendously important. According to the article "The Bildungsroman. Critical Survey of Long Fiction", Richard Hauer Costa writes, " The traditional bildungsroman is often an autobiographical novel depicting adolescent self-development and the educative experiences of youth. The modern feminist bildungsroman concentrates on crises in which the female protagonist finds herself facing problematical dilemmas with no assurance, if they persist, of safe passage. A woman awakens in her late twenties or early thirties to what Bonnie Hoover Braedlin calls “the stultification and fragmentation of a personality devoted not to self-fulfillment and awareness, but to a culturally determined, self-sacrificing, self-effacing existence.” These crises and concomitant struggles for oneness in cultures that fragment women into accepted roles provide the central themes of the feminist bildungsroman. Scholars have divided feminist bildungsromans into those that convey a “social quest” and those that focus on a “spiritual quest.” The distinguishing factors are, with the former, a search for identity in the socioeconomic sphere and, with the latter, a journey involving a “transcendent deity”(pp.7-8).
Throughout the novel, Ward gives us a unique perspective into her life as well as the lives of the young men who tragically passed away.
She first tells the story of her town of Delisle, Mississippi and it's history, as well as tell the story of her community in which she grew up in. Then she revisits the lives and stories of the young men but ironically,she revisits and explains each death backwards in time,starting with the most recent death to the earlier death of her younger brother. This is her story as it is the stories of the young men. By reliving and writing about her story, family ,and community,she will learn more about who she is, as well as learn more about the lives of her community and family. Writing this memoir will allow her to understand the birth of racism,why the men died, and also the "economic inequality and pased public and personal responsibility sour and spread here"(Ward pp.21). Writing this story will allow Ward to come of age by finally understanding why these men, and most importantly her brother died. Writing this memoir will allow her to understand that she survived in order to let others know about the truth of how southern blacks in America live and suffer and how America treats and views them as
nothing.
In her memoir, we get a glimpse into Wards' parent's struggling, and in the end, failed marriage. She also talks about how her mother struggled as a single black woman raising four children on her own. But at one point, as she was developing through adolescents and becoming and young woman, Ward resented her mother and began to blame her as the reason why she hated herself as well as why the world hated her. Ward's mother was the mother figure in her own family as she was growing up, because her own mother had to work two to three jobs in order to support her seven children. Her father had left her mother to be with another woman. A cycle that would have also destroyed her future family. At a young age, Wards mother had to quickly grow up and learn how to be an adult. Because of this, she became isolated and withdrawn. "She resented the strength she had to cultivate, the endurance demanded of women in the rural South. She recognized it's injustice even as a child. This made her quiet and withdrawn"(Ward pp.32). Ward's mother knew of the inequalities that she would face not only as as African-American living in the south, but as an African-American woman at that. But despite the challenges that she faced, she still dreamed of a better life for herself. She had a rare opportunity of going to California to go to school, an opportunity she knew that not many black woman were lucky enough to have. But she