Racial tension is present throughout “The Child by Tiger.” As a Black man, Dick Prosser is treated differently: Mr. Shepperton is especially impressed with him because he’s “the smartest darky that he’d ever known,” implying that Shepperton finds a Black person’s intelligence unusual or surprising. More explicitly, racial prejudice is shown when Lon Everett strikes Dick savagely without provocation. Though Dick himself doesn’t speak of racism directly, he sometimes drops enigmatic hints, such as when he warns the boys that one day “[God will] put de sheep upon de right hand and de goats upon de left,” hinting that segregation will not just be overcome someday, but dramatically reversed. Such statements suggest that Dick’s eventual violence is a reaction to his society’s racial injustice—a reaction that’s been building for a long time. After his shooting spree, the town rises up against him with mob violence, hunting him, killing him, and hanging his body from a tree, gesturing to the lynchings of the post-Civil War south. Wolfe, in harking back to this history of racism in describing Dick’s crimes, draws attention to the potential violence of every character, not just Dick. In doing so, Wolfe suggests that violence is an extreme manifestation of the harm that deeply embedded racism does to individuals and societies across racial lines.
Dick Prosser seems to have been angry about racism for a long time, and this anger apparently contributes to his eventual crime. The full potential of Dick’s rage is seen when Lon Everett crashes into Dick’s car and then punches him in the face, even though the accident is Lon’s fault. Though he doesn’t retaliate, Dick is extremely aggravated: his eyes get red and his hands twitch with rage at the sheer injustice of Lon’s action. The depth of Dick’s rage against racial injustice is further suggested by the mysterious biblical language he uses. Once, Dick says ominously to the boys “de day is comin’ when […] [God will] put de sheep upon de right hand and de goats upon de left.” Although he’s not openly saying that racism infuriates him, he’s heavily implying it. It seems that Dick uses this biblical phrase as an illustration of reverse segregation—something he apparently hopes for as revenge for the injustice he’s received. Taking all this into account, it is not completely surprising when Dick’s rage explodes in a spree of violence. Dick’s crime is disproportionately atrocious to his provocations, but nonetheless, the story presents his trial with racism as constant, ongoing, and even dehumanizing.
Similarly, the crowd’s response to Dick’s crime is clearly the manifestation of fear and rage that have lain dormant for a long time. The townspeople’s fervor for revenge is tremendous. They band together, amassing bloodthirsty hounds, breaking into the hardware store, and equipping themselves with guns and ammunition. When the people all rage in unison, Nebraska Crane whispers, “they mean business this time,” hinting that in the past, the town has stopped short of explicit violence, but the hatred was always there. Their all-too-ready eagerness to seek revenge against Dick suggests the magnitude of the racial hatred they’ve been suppressing. Their explosion is so great, in fact, that they undo whatever negligible progress the town has made towards restraining racist violence. Hugh McNair, trying to placate them, shouts “this is no case for lynch law!” But the crowd shouts back, “We’ve waited long enough! We’re going to get [Dick],” suggesting that the mob isn’t interested in hearing reason. Indeed, they show every indication of wanting to lynch Dick: they hunt him with dogs, brutally murder him, and hang his body in the square for everyone to see. This shows that racism has, at best, lain dormant within their town and that the townspeople were only waiting for the opportunity to feel justified in expressing it.
In the cases of both Dick’s and the mob’s violence, the reaction far exceeds the bounds of what provokes it. Dick’s violent rampage is an extreme reaction which doesn’t aim to dismantle racism, but rather seems to uphold a kind of racial supremacy. In his strange, biblical murmurings, Dick confesses that he wants “Armageddon day:” a day when racial segregation will not just be eradicated but reversed, with Black people at the top of society. It is also significant that Dick’s first murder is of another Black man. In this instance, Dick is not only at fault for being the one visiting Pansy Harris, another man’s wife, but he also unleashes his unjust attack on a man who’s been on the same side of racial injustice as him all along, showing how his violence has missed its initial mark. The mob shows the same excessive and off-target violence. When they capture Dick and execute him, they don’t just shoot him once but 287 times, as Ben Pounders triumphantly boasts. Obviously, one shot would’ve been sufficient to take down the murderer, but the mob was carried away by their own violence. These instances suggest that a history of racism creates out-of-control violence in everyone alike.
Throughout the events of the story, it is difficult to identify the antagonist, and this seems intentional on the author’s part. While Dick’s actions are clearly atrocious, society and other individuals in the story are simultaneously exposed and charged for their crimes of racial violence. By showing the history of racism rearing its head when Dick commits his crime, Wolfe ensures that we cannot condemn Dick without condemning the people who oppressed and segregated him in the first place. Moreover, Wolfe shows how extreme violence comes out of a long history of racism. In this story, violence occurs across the lines of race, suggesting that in a racist society, everyone can play a role in perpetuating violence, and everyone suffers harm as a result.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Racism and Violence ThemeTracker
Racism and Violence Quotes in The Child by Tiger
He never boxed with us, of course, but Randy had two sets of gloves, and Dick used to coach us while we sparred. There was something amazingly tender and watchful about him. He taught us many things—how to lead, to hook, to counter and to block—but he was careful to see that we did not hurt each other.
There was nothing that he did not know. We were all so proud of him. Mr. Shepperton himself declared that Dick was the best man he’d ever had, the smartest darkey that he’d ever known.
He went too softly, at too swift a pace. He was there upon you sometimes like a cat. Looking before us, sometimes, seeing nothing but the world before us, suddenly we felt a shadow at our backs and, looking up, would find that Dick was there. And there was something moving in the night. We never saw him come or go. Sometimes we would waken, startled, and feel that we had heard a board creak, the soft clicking of a latch, a shadow passing swiftly. All was still.
“Oh, young white fokes,” he would begin, moaning gently, “de dry bones in de valley. I tell you, white fokes, de day is comin’ when He’s comin’ on dis earth again to sit in judgment. He’ll put the sheep upon de right hand and de goats upon de left. Oh, white fokes, white fokes, de Armageddon day’s a comin’[.]”
Dick did not move. But suddenly the whites of his eyes were shot with red, his bleeding lips bared for a moment over the white ivory of his teeth. Lon smashed at him again. The Negro took it full in the face again; his hands twitched slightly, but he did not move. […] No more now, but there were those who saw it who remembered later how the eyes went red.
“This is no time for mob law! This is no case for lynch law! This is a time for law and order! Wait till the sheriff swears you in! Wait until Cash Eager comes! Wait— ”
He got no further. “Wait, hell!” cried someone. “We’ve waited long enough! We’re going to get that nigger!”
The mob took up the cry. The whole crowd was writhing angrily now, like a tormented snake.
Dick Prosser appeared in the doorway of the shack, deliberately took aim with his rifle, and shot the fleeing Negro squarely through the back of the head. Harris dropped forward on his face into the snow. He was dead before he hit the ground.
The men on horseback reached him first. They rode up around him and discharged their guns into him. He fell forward in the snow, riddled with bullets. The men dismounted, turned him over on his back, and all the other men came in and riddled him. They took his lifeless body, put a rope around his neck, and hung him to a tree. Then the mob exhausted all their ammunition on the riddled carcass.
For we would still remember the old dark doubt and loathing of our kind, of something hateful and unspeakable in the souls of men.
