51 pages • 1 hour read
Jesmyn WardMen We Reaped
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2013A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4 Summary: “DEMOND COOK”
In Chapter 4 Ward introduces Demond, a close friend of her sister Nerissa whom the author came to know in 2003. The author meets Demond in Nerissa’s first apartment, which she acquired after being kicked out of her mother’s home following a disagreement over how to raise her young son De’Sean. Nerissa’s position as the middle child colors her “sense of self,” causing her to “want to act out, to be special to someone: her parents, the boys drawn to her by her beauty and her funny, casual coolness” (63). Nerissa introduces Ward to Demond and, throughout the year, they party in excess in search of release.
A native to DeLisle, Demond grows up an only child in a two-parent family. After graduating high school, Demond joins the military for four years before returning to Mississippi. Described as a hustler, Demond learns trade after trade in multiple manual labor jobs at various factories in a changing economy shifting away from manufacturing. Demond reminds Ward of her brother.
As a witness to a shooting, Demond agrees to testify against an alleged shooter and against a drug dealer operating in DeLisle. On the night of his death, Demond is heading home after working a late-night shift “when someone [steps] out of the bushes in front of Demond’s house and [shoots] him as he [walks] up to his door, tired and grimy with dried sweat, wanting a shower, maybe a beer” (70). His fiancée discovers his body hours later. After a short-lived investigation, his murderer remains undiscovered. Ward returns to Demond’s house the day after his murder, sits on his steps, reminisces about their many nights out, and ponders what killed him.
Chapter 4 Analysis
Demond, like Josh, struggles to find employment in a changing world as he maneuvers between manual labor jobs. Ward notes the “move from manufacturing and making things to service and tourism. And Black people in the region, who historically did not have the resources to attend college […] were limited to jobs as cocktail waitresses, valet attendants, and food preparers” (66). By highlighting the shifting economy through which Demond and Josh struggle, Ward remarks on the larger forces that dictate the lives of young Black men. Barred from the opportunity to achieve a more stable life through education, men like Demond and Josh become victims of their circumstances.
Ward details her experiences with Demond in 2003 as she and their friends attempt to escape reality through excessive partying. Ward recalls, “all I wanted in the world was for it to go dark, to not exist. I wanted to black out again. Then I did” (74). She and her friends seek complete numbness from life’s afflictions and fall into cycles of alcohol and drug abuse.
Demond attempts to break free from this cycle and chooses to testify against an alleged shooter. Despite his attempts, Demond suffers the same disastrous fate when he is murdered in front of his home. Ward describes the search for the murderer, whom “we did not know […] would remain faceless, like the great wolf trackless in the swamp” (79). Through this simile, Ward connects Demond’s murderer to the wolf imagery she employs in Chapter 1. Demond’s murderer, like “the great wolf,” is a hidden force capable of death and destruction. Ward argues that Demond was a victim of a larger force, an active system over which he had no control.
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