The Street
by Ann Petry
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Poignant, tragic, and all-together too familiar of a story delivered by a most sensitive and capable author.
The Street is a shocking novel, in the sense that this was Petry’s debut. Her writing had a level of confidence and maturity only seen in well-established authors. She had full commend over the cast of complex characters. The prose was decisive, relentless, and full of energy. The story reached deep into each character, creating an expansive web that eventually closed in and in, until Lutie, the protagonist, finally broke.
Jones, Boots, Mrs. Hedges, and Junto were all predators, albeit with different hunting styles. None of them saw Lutie as a human, but merely an object to be conquered or possessed. The character Min provided a fascinating contrast to Lutie. Min was meek, unattractive, and completely devoid of ambition. She had no greater design on her life than a safe shelter to return to at the end of each day. Ironically she was spared of the frustration, disappointment, and danger that Lutie was subject to. Min had a sliver of hope for a contented ending. Beauty and youth were supposed to be an asset but they became the reason why Lutie was preyed upon.
Every character is well fleshed out through episodic flashbacks. It added to the complexity of the story. While each one had a hand in stacking bricks on the wall that eventually fenced Lutie in, they were all driven to their current state by a desperation not to dissimilar to that of Lutie’s. They were all victims and slaves to an unjust society that refused to treat them as people. They were all chained to something - lust, greed, or simply the desire to live a life with some semblance of dignity. They were all living through their own form of servitude.
Junto barely appeared on the pages, nor did he speak more than a few words, but his presence loomed over the entire book. He was the puppet master that pulled the strings behind the protection of wealth. Lutie came to believe in Benjamin Franklin’s idea of an American dream. Her tragedy is one where she allowed herself to dream in a world that refused to gave her a fighting chance. Her life was destroyed unironically by the man named after the club founded by Franklin himself.
Lutie is not the perfect woman. She is flesh and blood, with her own strengths and weaknesses, her meticulousness and impulses, her hopes and despair, her tenderness and violence, her endless love for her son and the perpetual guilt for failing him. The circumstances described in the book were so visceral that they could only have come from the author’s lived experience.
116th street was a character in itself: it provides meager shelter while exuding menace. It and all the streets like it are a result of a system designed to bolt the black community firmly to poverty so that they can never dream of a life of dignity, much less prosperity. The men cannot find jobs and the women can only find jobs with insultingly low pay. They were victimized by the white society and then in turn judged by it for the inevitable consequences. Bub is the youngest victim, the new generation of victim. Reform school meant abuse in the best case scenario and death in the worst. I highly recommend The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead if you are interested in learning about what might be in store for a gentle, innocent, and fearful boy like Bub.
