Darkness in Child by Tiger

             "He knew about football too, and today he paused, a powerful respectable-looking Negro man- (8). "We saw it, tried wretchedly to make ourselves believe that once this thing had spoken to us gently." (107). These two quotes are from opposite ends of the short story "Child by Tiger" yet said by the same person. The children once considered their beloved Dick as a role model to them, but after events and peer pressure, they called Dick "it". "It" as if Dick never meant anything to them and as if Dick was just a sack of meat. Wolfe tried to convey a message to the readers of "Child by Tiger" that evil and innocence are in every aspect of life, and even the ones that seem pure good may turn out to be evil. .
             Dick was once known to be the perfect role model to the neighborhood boys and seemed to know everything. The boys trusted him enough that he even got away with accidentally revealing his weapons. Although he didn't seem to have an evil side in the early stages of the short story, clues showed that something was wrong. "But suddenly the whites of his eyes were shot with red, his bleeding lips bared for a moment over the white ivory of his teeth."(19). In this incident, a drunken white man named Lon Everett struck Dick hard and many times because of whom Dick was. Like the seemingly peaceful person that Dick was, he did not move and did not respond physically or orally. The only clues were in his eyes. A reader can tell that he was annoyed and tired of being treated differently. That passage exposed a dark side of Dick and was revealing the author's message to the readers. This dark side was what exploded into a killing frenzy later in the story.
             The leading breakthrough in the story was when Dick went on the killing rampage. The weather, which was always in a bad condition during the rampage made the time period seem dark and evil and exacerbated the overall picture of Dick. The author used the literary tool of imagery to show darkness.