The Fall Of Man

In primitive cultures, rites of passage usually follow a well-defined, three stage archetypal pattern: separation, initiation, and return. The separation means physical isolation from the community, such as being sent to a remote place. The individual then goes through some sort of initiation, which involves intense suffering, in order to create a symbolic mood of death (circumcision, etc.). Finally, he is able to return to society, a new-born adult (symbolizing his rebirth). In Richard Wright's short story Big Boy Leaves Home, the central character, Big Boy, endures displaced puberty rite of passage. It is displaced in the sense that the boy is separated and initiated into the adult values of his respective community, though is not introduced to spiritual values. Instead, in ironic parody, Big Boy is introduced to secular values that condone and even celebrate ritualistic violence like mob lynching. By corrupting Big Boy's rite of passage, he has been dehumanized by white America, and thus, has regressed to a state of primality, and eventually, nothingness. Wright equates Big Boy's dehumanization to the collective denigration of the black man in racist, Reconstruction-era America.

The title of the short story, Big Boy Leaves Home, is cruelly ironic. The title has rightness to it; after all, a big boy, ready for the adult world, should leave home. However, in the narrative irony of Wright's story, Big Boy, while naked in front of a white woman, experiences forced separation from his community due to a murder he commits in self-defense.

Subsequently, Big Boy must descend into a ditch, symbolizing the underworld, for protection. Before he can enter his underworld, he must kill its bestial protector - its Cerberus - the snake. Big Boy "fought viciously, his eyes red, his teeth bared in a snarl. He beat till the snake lay still, then he stomped it with his heel, grinding its head into the dirt," (UTC, 47). Big Boy's regressive transformation is taking place right before our very eyes. In animalistic fashion, Big Boy viciously executes a snake. His primal state is apparent in his blood-red eyes and snarl. He is losing his humanness, and transforming into a fiend. The snake is also a Biblical allusion. The snake, or ophis, is a motif in the Bible representing deceit. Big Boy, as a black youth, has been forsaken by an impassible, hateful society. His human development has been impeded,