Summary
Claude is still selling pot, and on the streets because he has nowhere to go.
One day Claude is stopped be a junkie and asked to give him everything that he has. The junkie respected Claude by calling him sonny. According to Manchild in the Promised Land, it states that the junkie was nervous but was not scared. How can you be nervous and not scared? It doesn’t make any sense, at least to me. The junkie wasn’t scared of Claude, and he said that he would kill him because all he wanted was to have what Claude had. This is very interesting because it seems very weird and that’s just what happens in the world.
Claude is out to get a gun and kill the junkie that just robbed him. If you are someone that is dealing drugs to people, and one day you get stocked up by a random person, that only wants your drugs, then you are going to be made fun of. Claude didn’t want to have people laugh at hi, and for people to stick him up without any weapons. Claude was embarrassed, and had to borrow a gun from his old friend Danny that still stuck around. If Claude let the junkie get away from robbing him, Claude could never come back on the streets again. This is the life of a hustler.
As soon as Claude came out of Warwick, he met sugar. Sugar has become the love of his life. This is very ironic. I say this because before Claude even went to Warwick, he called sugar ugly, and called her so many bad names that would make her feel bad about her. She’s the prettiest girl that I’ve ever met, is what Claude says about sugar now that she has a better complexion and has figures of a Goddess.
Doing the hit got a lot of people killed and more people involved in things. Younger people started doing the hit, and because of this they started doing drugs. People who needed drugs didn’t play with their money and started stealing money from people so that they could buy drugs. The hit was a way to make poor people transform into a rich person. Life was no longer the same as it used to be with drugs and hit in Harlem.
According to the autobiography, Claude expresses that whenever men got high they realized that women were the ones who ran everything. I believe this, because all some men want to do is throw away their life. Sometimes I wonder why men can’t be like women. Till this day that question can’t be answered.
Quote
‘’ Look, man, it’s like you said; we came the street way together, and you know how that shit is. You know if I don’t kill that mother-fucker, I can’t come out on the street any more with any stuff in my pocket talkin’ about I’m gon deal drugs. Niggers will be laughin’ comin’ up in my collar, and sayin’, give me what you got.’ I mean, if I did that kinda shit. If I let the cat go on livin’, mother-fuckers would be tryin’ to rob me without a gun. That would the end of it all.’’
Reaction
I like the way how Claude says this quote, and I mean the dialect. Claude’s dialect is very strong, and it’s very interesting. I like the fact that Claude expresses his feelings and says to Danny that hey you I can’t let this junkie get away with stealing my drugs because I’ll get laughed at. I don’t like the way how Claude calls people bad names, because it’s disrespectful. I don’t see why Claude can’t respect the junkie and call him a junkie instead of something else that is very different from whom the person really is. I feel very bad that Claude was robbed of his drugs by a junkie, I mean that’s very sad, but at the same time the junkie had a gun. I thought Claude would have acted more manly to this situation, and stand up to this junkie and tell him that you know what I’m not giving you me drugs, so the only way you’re going to get it is if you really shoot me. I thought that hustler would act hard no matter what. My question that I have is, is Claude scared of being killed, or being shot? Earlier on in the book, it stated that Claude got ran over by a bus, and all sorts of other things that could have gotten him killed. I really wonder, if Claude has been in so many bad situations in his life, where he could have been killed, then why is he scared of death?
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