Mr. Dalton is the name of a character in Richard Wright’s
Native Son, which
My Pafology blatantly parodies. Monk’s Mr. Dalton plays a similar role to Wright’s, though Wright’s Dalton is white, not Black. Go’s decision to pursue the job opportunity his mother arranged for him adheres to another convention of the stereotypical urban-fiction narrative arc, in which the angry, underachieving, oppressed protagonist is given a chance to rise up. In
Erasure, Juanita Mae Jenkins’s
We’s Lives in Da Ghetto follows a similar arc.