Down These Mean Streets

“Pops, I wondered, how come me and you is always on the outs? Is it something we don’t know nothing about? I wonder if it’s something I done, or something I am. Why do I feel so left outta things with you—like Moms is both of you to me.” 

One of the main drivers of Piri’s personality is his discontentment with his relationship with his father. He is always seeking approval from his father, which rarely comes.

“They just grinned at me like a bunch of hungry alley cats that could get to their mouse anytime they wanted. That’s what they made me feel like—a mouse. Not like a smart house mouse but like a white house pet that ain’t got no business in the middle of cat country but don’t know better ‘cause he grew up thinking he was a cat.” 

Here, we see a rare instance of Piri dropping his bravado and displaying some vulnerability. He uses metaphorical language that portrays him as a naive victim of the Italian-American boys in his neighborhood. In this context, Piri also seems to be making a reference to his confusion over race. He thought he was a cat (white person), but is really a mouse (black person). Piri’s racial confusion is further displayed by the fact that he calls himself a white mouse, i.e., a white black person.

“I’m tough, a voice within said. I hope I’m tough enough. I am tough enough. I’ve got mucho corazon, I’m king wherever I go. I’m a killer to my heart.” 

Here, Piri hypes himself up in order to be “tough enough.”Piri’s toughness is not entirely natural; instead, he has to will it. After all, a person who is a real “killer to [their] heart” would probably not need to explicitly tell themselves such.

“‘So this is the way they treat our kids in school?’ and ‘What you-all expect? These heah white people doan give a damn.’” 

In this passage, Miss Washington defends Piri from his principal. Piri was able to find an alternate authority figure, a black woman from his own neighborhood, who is able to trump the white authority figure. Piri learns that he does not need to follow the straight and narrow path laid out by the schools and “white people.”

“I felt hypnotized, like in the flicks at the movie house. Like in the jungle pictures, where the big snake’s head moves around and around, and whoever he’s diggin’ gets froze.” 

“I felt hypnotized, like in the flicks at the movie house. Like in the jungle pictures, where the big snake’s head moves around and around, and whoever he’s diggin’ gets froze.” 

“In the daytime Harlem looks kinda dirty and the people a little drab and down. But at night, man, it’s a swinging place, especially Spanish Harlem. The lights transform everything into life and movement and blend the different colors into a magic cover-all that makes the drabness and garbage, wailing kids and tired people invisible.” 

Piri loves where he is from and sees it as truly magical and vital place. Spanish Harlem is capable of transformation, just as Piri sees himself as capable of transforming into a rich and successful man someday.

“Sometimes the thoughts would start flapping around inside me about the three worlds I lived in—the world of home, the world of school (no more of that, though), and the world of street. The street was the best damn one.” 

To a degree, Piri must adapt his personality to suit the “world” he is living in. It is in the world of the street, though, in which Piri feels most alive and to which he is most naturally suited.

“I felt my face. It was like touching someone else.” 

Here, Piri details his first experience with heroin. Though Piri is describing a real physical experience, this passage also acts as a metaphor for Piri’s addiction to heroin: he becomes a different person while he is addicted to heroin.

“What a world! Whether you’re right or wrong, as long as you’re strong, you’re right.” c

Might makes right. Piri knows that there is a moral dimension to life, the dimension of “right or wrong,” but also knows that strict morality does not truly apply in the streets.

“Man, if there’s any black people up on the moon talkin’ that moon talk, they is still Negroes. Git it? Negroes!” 

Brew makes the claim that the only thing that matters when it comes to race is the actual color of one’s skin. Culturally and genetically, Piri is a Puerto Rican, and Puerto Ricans consider themselves white. But Brew claims that if someone has dark enough skin, then they are black, regardless of where they or their ancestors are from.

“I was thinking that Gerald had problems something like mine. Except that he was a Negro trying to make Puerto Rican and I was a Puerto Rican trying to make Negro.” 

Brew is utterly disdainful of Gerald, but Piri is sympathetic to his troubles. Both Gerald and Piri are thoroughly confused about what race they are. Neither Gerald nor Piri will ever truly fit in with one specific race, they don’t believe, but they both feel bound to choose a race for themselves nevertheless.

“[T]he way out feeling when that good-o smack was making it with you, that nothing in the whole mundo world made no difference, nothing—neither paddies nor Poppa and strange other people.” 

Under the influence of heroin, Piri lists his two largest problems: “paddies” and Poppa. The problems are intertwined, because his father is, according to Piri, a black man who wants to be white. The “paddies” don’t accept Piri as white and his father doesn’t accept Piri as a member of the family in the same way he does Piri’s siblings (at least in Piri’s mind). 

“I hadn’t copped her. I wanted her, but I wanted her right—church, white dress, the whole bit. She was one thing the streets weren’t gonna make the mean way.” 

Piri talking about how he never had sex with Trina because he wanted to wait until marriage. Trina is pure to Piri, and he seeks to make his relationship with her as traditional as he can.

“Poor Dulcien looked beat. It’s sure tough to be a broad, I thought, but that’s life.” 

This is a good example of Piri’s callousness. Dulcien doesn’t get the respectful regard that Piri gives Trina, despite Dulcien being the mother of his child. In truth, Piri doesn’t properly respect Trina or Dulcien as real human beings. He places Trina on a pedestal and Dulcien he disregards entirely.

“One of the worst feelings I can imagine is to be something or someplace and not be able to accept the fact. So it was with me—I was a con in jail, but nothing in the world could make me accept it.” 

Piri’s view of his place within jail parallels his view of his race .It took him a long time to be able to accept the “fact” that he is black. Of course, jail is an actual fact, while Piri’s blackness is, for the most part, a concept.

“Look, they see each other as Romeo and Juliet, was though the world were a part of them and not the other way around.” 

Here, Piri is regarding the “married” prison couple of Claude and Big Jules. Piri is disdainful of their relationship. While to another person the relationship of Claude and Big Jules might have been seen as a loving response to the sorrows of jail, to Piri, the relationship is a fraud.

“It was better to get hurt outside where it could be seen and attended to than inside, where it would stay all his life.”

Throughout the book, Piri is physically beaten and physically beats others in turn. He is never deterred by physical confrontation or pain. Far scarier to him is having to deal with an emotional pain, a pain that lasts much longer than the physical pain Piri knows.

“It’s not gonna be an easy thing to dig me, I thought. This psychology means that people’s worst troubles are in their minds.” 

In prison, Piri begins to analyze himself through the help of books. Previously, Piri had never shown much interest in introspection. He always conceived of his troubles as being external to himself, and not self-created or self-propagated in some fashion.

“Here lies Piri Thomas, done in at Comstock Prison by a hack dressed in blue with a big brown stick. He tried to be a war counselor again, like he always was, and he cried heart and went out with a rep, and he didn’t complain ‘cause he had said his piece.” 

This is Piri’s eulogy to himself. In a way, Piri, or at least the tough street Piri, does die in prison. The Piri who emerges from prison is more thoughtful and less willing to die for his reputation.

“What’s a rep? If you’re in jail, who wants a jailhouse rep? What’s it worth? It’s better to be free, outside, home, with people, rice and beans, mambo music, kids laughing.” 

The new Piri decides that the simple, good things in life are worth more than an abstract concept of reputation, one that could be mean getting in trouble all over again.

“In like a kid, out like a man.” 

Compare this passage to Piri’s assertion earlier in prison life: “Like in I went, like out I’ll come” (277). Piri has learned to embrace change and personal growth. He no longer is interested in holding on to his old, tough self at all costs. 

“The ride through the Barrio was stone-great. It was like all the bright bulbs in the stores, windows, and lampposts were screaming just for me. I heard all the noises I’d missed for so long—screaming broads, crying kids, hustlers, dogs yapping, and cats making holes in mountains of garbage.” 

Piri frequently talks about enjoying music, and here the reader sees how influential sounds really are to Piri. He enjoys actual sounds, but also is able to conceive of primarily visual phenomena such as lampposts and cats making holes in terms of aural perception. An example of synesthesia. 

“I talked to him plain, like always; no big words, no big almighties, no big deals. I talked to Him like I had wanted to talk to my old man so many years ago.” 

Piri finally finds comfort in talking to God in the way he would have liked to have talked to his father. Instead of talking with a difficult and contentious figure in the form of his father, Piri finds a higher father figure in the form of God.