I don’t think Junto would have shared any information about Lutie with the police. My guess: Junto shows up, discovers and reports the homicide. He knows little. He may or may not admit to meeting with Boots earlier in the evening but, if he does, he says he left early as Boots has someone else stopping by. Junto was to come back later. And that’s all he knows, folks … nope, no idea who Boots planned to meet. Let’s just say that Junto doesn’t get where he is by oversharing information with authorities. And he won’t be pushed on it … remember that the super learns, when he reports Mrs. Hedges, that Junto has some leeway with the police.
I’m not saying Lutie wouldn’t have been a suspect but it won’t come from Junto.
It’s funny what I remember learning about Pullman Porters is that they were a stepping stone to the middle class for many and that their was a huge strike which started with the workers making the Pullman cars in the 1890s I think. It was the first time an injunction was used to break a strike. So much white-washing of history!
@ignatius, thank you for the Langston Hughes poem! That last line…
I couldn’t help but think of Lutie’s fury at Bub when she sees him with the shoeshine box, acknowledging to herself, “…you’re afraid that if he’s shining shoes at eight, he will be washing windows at sixteen and running an elevator at twenty-one, and go on doing that for the rest of this life.”
@VeryHappy, I haven’t read The Warmth of Other Suns, but I do have Caste by the same author. I haven’t read it yet, but am hoping to do so soon.
The Prophet only makes a brief appearance in the book, but I kind of liked him, even though he’s a charlatan. He listens to Min – makes her feel as if she is worth listening to: “…she thought talking to him had been the most satisfying experience she had ever known.” That’s one reason he is able to draw clients; the other is that he takes advantage of their desperation. The magic he provides is basically a placebo, but it is enough to build Min’s confidence and make her feel (and act) stronger. Ironically, her goal is for the Prophet to “give me something to fix it so I won’t be put out.” But in the end, following the Prophet’s instructions ultimately leads her to leave of her own accord.
@Mary13, my sister is reading Caste, after reading Warmth a few years ago. She thinks Warmth is better. What I found so good about [Warmth* is that Wilkerson follows three people throughout their lives, and then she has a short chapter about the history of the migration – more data, a broader perspective – which could have been boring, but you keep reading because of the personal stories she focuses on. It’s really well done.
This one is answered by the WP article posted by @jerseysouthmomchess (post #31):
The article also notes that Petry’s own life was peaceful and secure: “As much as possible for a black woman in the first half of this century, she escaped the effects of racism.” It’s interesting because I feel like Lutie’s rage in The Street is almost palpable; it’s part of what makes the book hard to read. Her anger and desperation feels so real to me that I would have thought Ann Petry was writing from her own personal experience.
Back to Native Son for a minute:
A woman of few words! She must have been a tough interview.
I felt sorry for that interviewer! I felt the journalist’s voice myself. She seemed to have each character be emblematic of a different way that Harlem was a horrible place to live. But I will say, that for the most part they came alive and did not just seem like stereotypes.
The book was a story of rage. I found it interesting how Petry would introduce a character and then later we saw their back story and their rage. I often wonder how much of Lutie’s rage was at herself. They had such a good deal with the foster children. I just couldn’t believe that she would jeopardize it.
I don’t think she asked Bub about why he was arrested because to her it didn’t really matter. It was the street’s fault. I still can’t believe that she left Bub. He was a sweet little boy. The rage will continue with him.
From @mary13 link above, the prof writes about teaching “the street” … This book shook me so much that whenever I taught it in class, later that night I would slip into my sleeping sons’ bedrooms to watch them and make silent promises. Even now, whenever I finish it, I calculate how old the main character’s son will be and wonder what sort of life he had. I care deeply about these characters. They are real to me.
I didn’t read the book, but am following this discussion.
Lutie abandons her son, which is an absolutely crushing ending,
Why do you think she chose to end like this?
Was it “the street” that destroyed her soul, or was Lutie, not a loving mother?
Is there another ending that may have worked better? If Lutie and Bub had moved away to a better place, would that have contradicted the theme and message Petry intended?
She chose to abandon him in order to save herself from being charged with murder. But there were other options: She could have contacted her husband, or Mrs. Hedges, or someone to go take care of Bub. If she genuinely thought he needed a lawyer and she had no other way, she could have slept with the lawyer to avoid his fee, or slept with Boots to get the money. I would have; wouldn’t you?? I would have done anything to protect my children, including sleeping with people I didn’t want to sleep with.
I think she felt defeated. She’d failed as a mother. She persuaded herself that he was better off without her.
I think I felt dissatisfied with the ending, because I don’t see how she goes on from here. She can’t start anew in another city without being crushed by grief for her son.
Yes, and she also doesn’t want her son to ever know that she is a murderer:
Ultimately, whatever reasons Lutie has for leaving don’t really matter, because the minute she murders Boots, she has abandoned her son. If she stays, she goes to jail and Bub goes to reform school. If she leaves, Bub is at the mercy of the system and goes to reform school.
If Lutie thought there was no other way, I think she would have eventually done any of those things to save her son. But up until the moment she murders Boots, she is still working out a plan; she still thinks she can fix things. The murder happens in an instant, a culmination of the all-encompassing rage that @silverlady mentioned above. And once it happens, there are no real decisions left to make. Bub no longer belongs to her.
As to Bub’s fate, I can only hope that he somehow gets back to his father, although it seems unlikely that white authorities in 1946 would go to the trouble of tracking down a black man in Jamaica. The other possibility might be that Mrs. Hedges takes the boy and Junto supports him out of a vestige of guilt. After all, things would have turned out very differently if Lutie had been hired as a singer and paid for her work. Junto is not a fool; he will certainly recognize that his actions drove her to the edge.
I wasn’t dissatisfied with the ending. I mean…this is a world in which there can be no satisfaction. Considering all that transpires in the book, I would have scoffed if everything had worked out in the end. It wouldn’t have felt true to the story or the author’s intent.
I don’t think Lutie will survive for long. How could she support herself on the run? How could she live with what she had done – and live without her son? I do think she loved Bub deeply, despite the neglect.
In a 1992 Washington Post review of The Street, Ann Petry talks about the children she interacted with in Harlem, and who were the inspiration for Bub. This line made me feel like Mrs. Hedges taking in Bub might really have been the future Petry had in mind for him:
