Raymond's Run: Analyse af Toni Bambaras novelle

Most people have an interest in sport or something else and most of them devotes in their interest. But is it necessary to be the best or is it more important to have fun? Do you need to think of yourself and be a selfish child or do you have to be there for your family and have friends in your life? In the novel Raymond’s run written by Toni Bambara, we hear about Squeaky who runs. The story which is written in Short Stories for students and is about having an important interest and be so absorbed in it that you think you’re the best in the world. But can your way of thinking change?

In Raymond’s run we hear about Squeaky who is a black girl and is the main character and also the narrator so we get her point of view. Her real name is Hazel Elizabeth Deborah Parker, but she’s known as Squeaky. She is growing up in Harlem in America. The name Squeaky turned up because she’s a little girl with skinny arms and a squeaky voice. She is a runner and the best in her village. She’s a confident girl who thinks that nobody can beat her. She likes to put herself in focus and talks about how good she is. We see this when she says “There is no track meet that I don’t win the first-place medal. I used to win the twenty-yard dash when I was a kid in kindergarten” and so on. The running is so important for her, and it’s a luck that she doesn’t have to do much at home. Like she has never work to do around the house, her mother does that. The only thing she needs to do is to take care of her big brother Raymond. He’s not quite right and sometimes she says “I slip and say my little brother”. But Squeaky is very protective and takes good care of her brother. She isn’t the feminine girl because she says she doesn’t need to be there to the May Pole dancing because she has some bad experiences in nursery school. She was a strawberry dancing on tiptoe with her arms in a circle over her head. She describes herself as a perfect fool and she only did it so her mother and father could come dressed up and clap. She is a girl who describes herself as “a black poor girl who really can’t afford to buy shoes and a new dress you only wear once” She only shows up to the Mayday to run.