"The Man Who Killed a Shadow"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how the main character in the short story "The Man Who Killed a Shadow" by Richard Wright is a black man named Saul, a man who has never learned to relate to others in the normal manner but who sees them as shadows. It shows how this began in his childhood and has continued into adulthood and the only way he can see people any other way comes when he drinks alcohol. It analyzes how the story presents this vision as an inversion, for to the rest of the world--at least the white world that holds power--Saul himself stands as no more than a shadow.

From the Paper:

"Saul lives a relatively simple life, his job never that demanding, his time taken up with fear and drinking to assuage the fear. The portrait painted of the life of a black man in a white world becomes devastating as the story progresses. This builds until it leads to Saul's job as an exterminator, by definition a job associated with death and the elimination of what people often fear. Even that job he loses because of his drinking. His next job entails cleaning different businesses, a demeaning job for a man who has been demeaned many times in his life. When he starts to clean the library, he meets the "strange little shadow woman . . . who stared at him all the time in a most peculiar way" (93). He thinks she may be afraid of him, but clearly he fears her. She begins to challenge his work, as if he had not cleaned under her desk when he clearly had. She says she finds dust there when no dust could survive Saul's cleaning."

More papers on "The Man Who Killed a Shadow":

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• Poem Review # 118915 : "The Man He Killed"
• Analytical Essay # 121356 : "The Man Who Was Almost a Man": A Response"

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