Beyond Protest: The Street as Humanitarian Narrative

Abstract

Son, a comparison that has not generally worked in Petry's favorinterpreters continue to concentrate on issues associated with that literary mode. Central terms for interpreting The Street remain determinism, environment, and protest. Critics have concluded that Petry evicts hope entirely from The Street and that the novel expresses unqualified despair as well as horror at the stagnation of life (Wurst 2; Yarborough 46; Barrett 106).' Such conclusions mesh with the standard definition: we expect a deterministic protest novel not only to present a negative picture but also to function as a negative act. Simply put, protest always speaks out against something. The novel's bleak ending provides ample rationale for such a reading. After Lutie Johnson murders Boots Smith, she flees Harlem for Chicago, leaving behind her son Bub whom she has tried throughout the novel to protect. Bub's recent implication in mail fraud will assuredly land him in reform school, signaling the absolute failure of his mother's efforts. As if this denouement were not bleak enough, the novel concludes with Lutie doubting her humanity, wondering what good could ever come from teaching a person such as herself to read. Insofar as reading is a central trope of personhood in African American literature from the slave narrative onward, Lutie's doubting her humanity sounds an especially dismal note.2 Most critics look to the environment to explain the pervasive sense