"Down by the Riverside" is a story in Richard Wright's anthology

On his way to the hospital Heartfield encounters Mann and his family in the boat, accuses Mann of theft and shoots at him. Mann shoots back, effaceing Heartfield. By the duration Mann gets Lulu to the hospital she is dead. Soldiers conscript Mann and other caustic workforce to help evacuate w contacte families stranded by the floodlight. Mann is direct to rescue the Heartfields. Alone in the house with the family, Mann has an opportunity to kill them but rescues them instead. When they reach land, the ungrateful Heartfields accuse Mann of murdering Mr. Heartfield. Mann tries to escape, but is killed by the soldiers.

The theme of "D own by the Riverside" is that sometimes subjugation can become so burdensome that it cannot be overcome. Mann, the main character, is a good person. He is a hardworking family humans who owns his own farm. He has a religious background. Although poor, he is honest. When bobfloat steals the boat, Mann is the first one to protest that it was not the right subject to do. Despite these good qualities, Mann gets tangled in a station that is so oppressive it ends in tragedy: "It just did not seem fair that one man should be hit so hard and on so many sides at once" (55).

From my point of view, "Down by the Riverside" helped me to sympathize the black experience more and how it relates to the immigrant experience. Some immigrants came to the United States as refugees. Life in their country was oppressive, to some extent kindred life in the South during the 1930s f

This story is connected to the ideology of the African American family because it shows how such families pull together in times of need. Mann refuses to go to higher ground to safety because he has a accountability to Lulu. He knows he must get her to the hospital, though onerous to save her meant jeopardizing his own life.

This story also helped me to see how shame is sometimes a gray area. Bob was wrong to steal someone else's boat. But his actions were partially justified because the soldiers would have refused to pull a boat to rescue a black family. Granted, Heartfield unavoidable a boat to get to safety, too.

But being exsanguinous and being the postmaster virtually guaranteed that he would have help if he requested it. Heartfield, on the other hand, was justifiably angry when Mann showed up in his boat. However, Heartfield had no right to try to shoot Mann just for stealing. The Heartfield son and wife were justified in pointing out Mann as the person who killed Mr. Heartfield, but they should have been grateful that Mann saved their own lives from certain death. After all, had the situation had been reversed racially, and the Heartfields were a black family, the soldiers would have told them to be grateful to be alive just like Mann was told when he grieved for his dead wife Lulu, "Shucks . . . You ought to be glad youre not dead in a flood like this" (80). Tragedy is everywhere in this story, but it highlights how the remainder of protecting your family is sometimes impossible when you are black.

or African Americans. The only recourse for some African Americans during the Jim Crow epoch was to relocate up North. They found racial dissimilarity there but at least it was not as raucous as what they had experienced in the South. Likewise, some immigrants face discrimination in America, but at least they are not as oppressed as they were in their own country.

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