Racisme og fordomme i 'After You, My Dear Alphonse'

Title: “After You, My Dear Alphonse”Author: Shirley JacksonPublished in: “The New Yorker”Date of Publication: 1943Genre: Short Story

Boyd is a negro boy living with his mother, father and sister. His father works as a foreman at a factory. His mother lives at home while taking care of the family. Boyd’s family are not poor, they can easily buy food and clothes. Boyd is very good friends with Mrs. Wilson`s son Johnny. They often play games together in their spare time.

Johnny is an only child living with his mother and father. He loves to play with other kids and specially Boyd. They prevent to be tanks shooting from foxholes. Johnny only has a friendly look on Boyd in comparison to his own mother who has a completely different view on Boyd. Her view on Boyd is that he is a negro boy and therefore she has a lot of prejudices.

Mrs. Wilson cooks for the family of three. She doesn’t work. She is very interesting character in the short story, because she has a different look on Boyd. She has all these prejudices on Boyd as a negro boy. For example when her son tells her that Boyd doesn’t like tomatoes she just replies “Boyd will eat anything”. Another example is when she offers Boyd and his family a huge load of clothes totally free. Boyd then nicely declines the offer. You can tell from this story that Mrs. Wilson is very racist in her actions involving Boyd as a negro. She doesn’t behave as she normally would around a white boy. She becomes someone different when she is around Boyd. In the short story she also immediately thinks that Boyd always is very hungry, and she says to him, that he can just eat all the food he wants, as in her view he must be very hungry.