"The Man who was Almost a Man"

manhood to Dave seems to mean buying a gun so that people will take him seriously as an adult. He believes that everyone views him as just a young boy rather than the man he wants to be an believes that this gun is the key to becoming a man. The effects of the dialogue allow the reader to realize the setting is in the south during the time right after the civil war when many African Americans were still uneducated and working the fields. The author does this by having Dave talk in choppy sentences using words that are constantly mispronounced and hard to understand from a gramatical point of view.

the conflicts that Dave faces are man vs society, man vs self, and man vs nature. Man vs society because the whole reason Dave is buying a gun is because everyone around him views him as a boy rather than a man and he is uneducated and unable to change this in any other way because of his place in society. Man vs self because Dave is obviously facing alot of internal confusion and anger about the way he is treated. Finally Man vs Nature because Dave in his climatic moment of shooting his gun strikes and wounds a mule. Then Dave tries to fill the wound with dirt thinking that will fix the problem which further goes to show how uneducated and in a way innocent (doesnt know any better) he is.