Preview

mathway

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
284 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
mathway
Monkeyman” is a story from 145th Street, the collection of short stories by Walter Dean Myers. (From Amazon.com review) “Walter Dean Myers's book of interconnected short stories is a sweet and sour mix of the comedy and tragedy of the human condition, played out against the backdrop of the Harlem neighborhood that is centered around 145th Street…Myers frankly discusses the consequences of violence, drive-bys and gang war through his articulate characters, but tempers these episodes with such a love of his fictional community that every character shines through with the hope and strength of a survivor. Changing his point of view from teen to adult and back again through each vignette, Myers successfully builds a bridge of understanding between adolescents and adults that will help each group better understand the problems of the other. [It] beautifully illustrates the good that can come out of a community that stands together.”
Summary: An unnamed narrator tells the story of Monkeyman, one of the narrator’s friends and a resident of 145th Street. Monkeyman’s bookishness sets him apart from many of his peers, as does his willingness to interfere with the Tigros gang, which is trying to take over the neighborhood. When Monkeyman prevents one of the Lady Tigros from attacking his friend Peaches with a knife, the Tigros set out to get revenge. Monkeyman appears to accept the Tigros’ challenge to fight, but when he arrives at the scene he shocks everyone, his friends included, by taking a position of non-violence. Monkeyman is injured in the fight and its aftermath, but the narrator discovers that Monkeyman has done this to prove a point, which teaches the narrator some important lessons about courage and community.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    It was a sunny day in Piedmont Park of Atlanta, GA where a miserly man named Jake Smith could be found arguing with his girlfriend Jodi Lee about rent for their apartment. He and his girlfriend were notorious for fighting each other amongst others and bringing their problems to the public. Everyone in the city knew the secrets they kept from one another as well as the abuse their dog had taken from their anger. After the altercation the two parted ways and Jake Smith got in his Camry and began down the crowded street.…

    • 432 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Monkey’s Paw is a short story written by W. W. Jacobs, it has an element of suspense,…

    • 639 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In his autobiography, Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun, Geoffrey Canada exposes the reader to numerous types of violence witnessed while growing up in South Bronx, a subaltern community in New York. The slum is full of lower class individuals who are in a constant struggle for power, acceptance and safety. The book begins by discussing his childhood and how he had to learn the codes and behaviors accepted in his neighborhood and his place in the hierarchy of the street. Each block had different leaders, and each was just as dangerous as the next. Geoffrey Canada’s book accounts his personal experiences that constitutes as important parts of his upbringing. For example, when he got his friends’ basketball taken, his friend showed him the correct response and taught him how he needed to “dominate [his] emotions” and learn to always…

    • 1482 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    MAth

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages

    2. Describe the method you have chosen for your process recording and your plans for making it. For example, if you choose to submit a video file, how will you record and produce this? How will you upload it and send it to your instructor? (14 points)…

    • 1081 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The story is told through the eyes of Sonny's older brother, who's name we never disclose. What we do know is the narrators currently a algebra teacher, married with kids, and some of his history that gives us insight to the mans personality. As a young man he lost both parents, first his father the later his mother. After high school he went into the military. While in the service he had a rocky relation ship with his brother, Sonny. With the information presented to us through the story, it shows the narrator had a difficult child hood, but he rose above it and kept on the straight and narrow. He's got family, a career, and some stability which is much more than most have in the ghetto's of Harlem. The narrator serves us an image of himself as an orderly man with a ground perspective of things, he's a realist. Which separates him quite drastically from his brother Sonny.…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The struggle of people emotionally and physically is the downfall and corruption of society. S.E Hinton, author of The Outsiders tells a story about two kids named Johnny and Ponyboy who are in a gang called the Greasers. They live in a wrong doing world of gangs and fights. After Johnny protects Ponyboy by killing a rival gang member named Bob, the two boys run away. A young criminal named Dally helps them escape. After an incident with a burning church Johnny dies and Dally dies soon after because of the sorrow Johnny’s death caused him. In the novel The Outsiders, S.E Hinton demonstrates that violence can lead to nothing more than emotional hardships, crime, and death.…

    • 697 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Bodega Dreams

    • 1008 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Chino, originally a kind-hearted, law abiding citizen, knew establishing a name for oneself at a young age was necessary. As Chino expresses, “To have a name other than the one your parents had given you meant you had status in school, had status on your block. You were somebody” (Quinonez 4). Getting a name meant having to fight. Relevance was important for a young Puerto Rican in el barrio. If a name is well known, the more power and recognition one obtains through their “fighter quality”. With the powerful combination of fear and power, total domination and influence over their subordinates is acquired. After forming an alliance with the town’s most callous fighter Sapo, fighting became a way of life for the two.…

    • 1008 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    If you were given the opportunity to change your fate at the expense of others, would you have the courage to risk it? In the story, “The Monkey’s Paw”, the author shows how the characters take a leap of faith without knowing what the consequences may be. The White’s family is made up of three, Mr. and Mrs. White along with their son Herbert. They live in a safe and comfortable house with everything they need, but it’s also separate from the outside world. Through a mixture of gruesome reality, the author portrays a horrific scenery of society’s greed and the danger of wishing. W.W Jacobs describes these horrific scenery over supernatural occurrences and motifs.…

    • 775 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    During their childhood, Sonny and his brother are trapped in the city of Harlem, a city of drugs and poverty. A city where the community must team up in order to survive, but often fails to come together. The narrator depicts the inescapabilty of Harlem as he brings his brother back to Harlem, “Some escaped the trap, most didn't. Those who got out always left something of themselves behind, as some animals amputate a leg and leave it in the trap” (Baldwin 419). The two brothers were trapped in a life surrounded with pain and discrimination due to the surroundings of Harlem. Sonny is brought back to the environment that he was trying to escape. He is unable to live with the realities of Harlem. His environment engulfs him as he develops a drug habit that many of the characters in the story can relate to. The only way he is able to escape the sufferings of reality is through the use of drugs. His drug use dissolves the inequalities that he faced while in Harlem and as an African American during the period, making them unrecognizable for brief moments. Similarly, Sonny’s brother reflects on the hardships that he shares with his brother, “Yet, as the cab moved uptown through streets which seemed, with a rush, to darken with dark people, and as I covertly studied Sonny's face, it came to me that what we both were seeking through our separate…

    • 1871 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gangs In The Outsiders

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The scare of Ponyboy getting jumped and threatened, and the murder of Bob show the violence that results from the hate and spite of divided groups. In the story there many negative examples and consequences from the gang life. The gangs were small groups, within the community in which bad choices were made out of loyalty to the group, and to the gang as a whole. All member of the gangs seemed to have great love for one another, and would sacrifice for each other, but the hatred they shared caused so much sadness and pain within the…

    • 612 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Native Son Blog

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Mr. Dalton is the South Side Real Estate Company owner. As president of the company, Mr. Dalton owns many communities including the “Black Belt” (174), which was an isolated “corner of the city tumbling down from rot” (174). On one hand, Mr. Dalton appears to be a hero to the black community. Mr. Dalton (charitably) contributes to the black community by donating a few millions of dollars and Ping-Pong tables. Mr. Dalton also offers chauffer jobs and encourages education in young black men. On the surface, Mr. Dalton in suggested as an heroic figure in society; however, in reality, Mr. Dalton contributes significantly toward the social discrepancies that compels oppression and fear, which leads to violence in black individuals like Bigger. Mr. Dalton is one of the many property owners who agreed to only allow blacks to rent apartments only on the city’s South Side. These…

    • 683 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Sonny's Blues

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The Narrator, and his brother “Sonny” was born and raised in Harlem in the 1950’s. During those times drugs and crime were all the streets can offer. Their parents died and their mom left the Narrator to raise his brother to look after him she said “You got to hold on to your brother,” “and don’t let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening to him and no matter how evil you gets with him”.…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    James Baldwin describes the Harlem streets as a “darkness” that affects the people around it, this causes the narrator to be portrayed as conflicted and trapped in his surroundings. In the mid-1900s the Harlem streets were a time of poverty and crime, while the Narrator was not a part of the crime, the reader can see that he is still greatly affected by it from the world around him. The Narrator is conflicted with his surroundings after he learns that Sonny has become addicted to Heroin. He has always known the streets of Harlem to be dark, but the reader sees him learn the truth of the streets for the first time. Baldwin writes, “And I’d known this avenue all my life, but it seemed to me again, as it had seemed on the day I’d first heard about…

    • 275 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    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…

    • 196 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Pigman

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The plot of The Pigman, by Paul Zindel is the key element in understanding and clarifying the situations that this book’s characters go through. The setting of The Pigman is a neighborhood in New York City and more specifically Franklin High School. The protagonists of this story are John Conlan and Lorraine Jensen. The story does not have a specific person or character that is the antagonist, but is several different challenges that John and Lorraine are faced with throughout the story. The title of the book comes from the nickname that John and Lorraine gave to their new friend, Angelo Pignati, partly because of his name but also because of the collection of pigs that belonged to his late wife. The author of the book, Paul Zindel, is from Staten Island, New York. The Pigman was Zindel’s first novel and he won many awards for this novel including “Children’s Book of the Year” in 1968. The three reasons I selected plot as the most important literary element of this novel is: 1) John and Lorraine become friends with an older man who has no wife and no children of his own, 2) John and Lorraine face many conflict and complications that teenagers still face today, and 3) John and Lorraine have to deal with death which is unexpected.…

    • 733 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics