Afas Discussion 4

Jie Feng

AFAS ENGL GWS 342 Discussion 4

November 24th, 2014

An unarmed young black man named Michael Brown was shot to death by an off-duty police officer named Darren Wilson in St.Louis on October 8th, 2014. Now when a grand jury decided not to indict Darren, people started demonstrating and taking the street to protest the result. People are angry about the result because Michael was only 18 years old and he was just holding a sandwich not a gun as the police officer believed. African Americans still face unfair treatment and discrimination in nowadays. It is a historical problem. Black people are suffered from psychological and physical problem when they were treated unfairly and felt trapped.

Lutie Johnson is the main character of Ann Petry’s book “The Street”. The story was talking about how Lutie wanted to leave 116th street and had a better life with her son Bub. Lutie had to work really hard to support her family. However, she felt trapped when she saw her son shined shoes for white people on the street. She was afraid that her son would clean the window and run elevator for the rest of his life, which Lutie did not want to. She told him that the reason she did not want him shinning shoes was that the hardest and lowest paying dirtiest work is the only work the whites want blacks to do (Petry 72). She felt trapped when she found her husband cheated on her when she worked outside as well. She felt desperate because she were not afford of paying for the fee gets devoiced with her husband. She wanted to leave 116th street and got away from poverty.

One the one side, Lutie did not get much help either from black or white people. This is the main difference between Lutie and Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s novel “ Their Eyes Were Watching God”. Janie was loved and helped by her families and friends. She was able to find her true love and spent lots of time with him. Her love named Tea Cake who taught her everything and guided Janie to a happy world. Pheoby is a white lady who helped Janie the most. Phenoby listened to Janie’s story and gave her advice. Comparing with Lutie, Janie was lucky. On the other side, Janie and Lutie shares something in common and that is both of them have been through a tough life. They were born in a poor family and they had to start working when they were really young. This is a typical life for black people. Even through Janie found her true lover at the end of the story, she still suffered from two unhappy marriages. She had to marry to a man that she did not love for solving financial difficulty.