Theme Essay on Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets

Theme on Piri Thomas, Down These Mean Streets - Essay Examplehich the readers experience how they lead the author to a dark fortune and they also just become able to peek in the narrators psyche that constantly pulls him towards the darkness. In one sense, the alleys in the novel are the induction of the narrators dark data track of life, as in the article The Use of Sidewalks Safety Jacobs comments on how street can be the abstraction A metropolis sidewalk by itself is nothing. It is an abstraction.the same might be said by streets... ( Jacobs 30). But the way how Jacobs deals with the idea of street is different from Piris approach to it in the sense that whereas Jacobs views street from an optimistic and positive vantage point, the streets in Piris novel are the path of destructions. In the novel, Piri notes that A twelve-year-old pincer walking the streets at 3 a.m. was a nothing sight in Harlem (6). For Piri, a twelve-year-old kid means the kids lost track. In contrast, a kid on a city sidewalk that is under proper safety measures- conveys a sort security release. Coming out of Jacobss concept of a street, Piri uses it as an abstraction of various culture related oppression, suppression, and discrimination of the early twentieth century of American society. In this sense it can be said that if any of the views is taken aside from the other, the socio-cultural notion of a street will remain incomplete both Jacobss and Piris views are complementary to each other.In the novel, Piris general tendency is to look into the society, first, to find out its anomalies and discrepancies, and because he moves on to reflect them in the portrayal of the city streets. But in an opposite manner, Jacobs, in the first place, focuses the city streets in order depicts the society. To a great extent, Jacobs approach is analogous to a purity approach toward the black. It deliberately leaves a scope for an observer to overlook the societal variables that are primarily r esponsible for the city