Analysis of Predators

A predator is one that victimizes, plunders, or destroys especially for one’s own gain. In the book The Mee Street Chronicles: Straight up Stories of a Black Woman’s life written by Frankie Lennon the selection Predators explains how the regular bar attendees can easily destroy the comfort the narrator had inside. The bar made her feel more at home but witnessing the homophobia made her uneasy and frightened. The narrator is at Allen’s, a bar located in Evansville, Indiana. Inside the bar the regulars began watching the CBS Evening News where Anita Bryant presents her campaign to end discrimination against homosexuals.

The predators in the story are Les the bar tender, Anita Bryant campaigns spokeswoman, Cecil, Sonny and Nance which are bar regulars. The reason they are referred as predators is because they are attacking the lifestyle of many homosexuals at that time. The narrators even thought they did not know she is a lesbian she feels as if she is the prey, waiting to be assaulted. “The hunted” or “the prey” is used metaphorically to signify the homosexuals that are being attack for just wanting to have a normal life. The title Predators is appropriate for the story because the homophobia that is driven out of the people surrounded by the narrator makes her feel defenseless and scared, make her feel like if they were attacking her. If she were to stand up for herself and the homosexual community, then they will find out her secret desire and punish her for being different.

In this story the emotional tone brings out frustration in not being able to shut off any insulting words or comments which are not being referred directly toward the narrator but causes her to become angry and bring out the emotions of how she really feels. On page 159, in paragraph five shows how tension grew, “I blew out a frustrated breath. What Bryant was saying boiled down to a load of crap. You didn’t choose or get recruited like you were joining the army or some kind of club. You were born the way you were born.” The atmosphere at Allen’s bar is heated with outraged emotions that cause tension and anxiety within the narrator. On page 161 in the last paragraph says, “His tone made my hair stand on end. I could hear the mutterings in the room boiling up to higher temperatures. I’d never felt anything like this in Allen’s before. Anita Bryant had raked up a kind of meanness, a kind of glad rush to violence that lay hidden underneath these people...” Predators impacted me emotionally because it made me feel irritated with the actions that the campaign “Save Our Children” was bringing out within people. This story made me an impact intellectually by becoming aware of how people in society can be easily persuaded into ideological ideas.

There are three major conflicts that drive the story. One of the major conflicts is the “Save Our Children” Bryant campaign. Spokeswoman Bryant says, “Since homosexuals cannot reproduce,” she said, striking a tone of both sincerity and loathing, “they must recruit children to refresh their ranks. We must not allow them to continue.” The ideology clashing is the belief of society mistaking homosexuals as pedophiles when it’s really the heterosexuals in their own neighborhood that are creating these criminal actions against children but they are trying to cover their tracks by blaming homosexuals. The second major conflict that also drives the story is the tension that grows between the bar regulars. The values clashing is the idea that homosexuals can be integrated into society. The bar regulars show anger because they are afraid of change within their community and society. The last major conflict that guides the story is the narrator inner voice. The narrator reacts with rage towards all the comments being said, but her inner voice tells her to stay calm and be quiet because if she speaks out, people at Allen’s will find out how she really feels and will no longer be accepted anywhere in Evansville. In Predators there are heterosexual needs to deny and destroy other people’s lives because they choose to find happiness like them but not with the opposite sex. The narrator makes a difficult choice, either to defend her believes and other homosexuals or keeping silence so she can belong. In the Coming Out Steps to Integration by James L. Helmuth, the narrator is in stage number two: Coming Out to Self because on page 159 the last paragraph says, “I thought about Stacy and rubbed the palm of my hand across my lips. Nobody recruited me into being attracted to women. Nobody forced me to love her. That admission woke up The Corners, the place, at the back of my mind where I’d vaulted my secrets.” This shows how she came out to herself by acknowledging her hidden love for Stacy.

Finishing this story it made me think to myself, where would I be if I didn’t belong or blend in with this society? It made me realize that with my friends and family and the need to fit in with people, I would be nowhere. I would be stranded in a hot, dry desert trying to find water and shelter and trying to find a way to live to see the next day. We all have the need to fit in but that does not mean we have to discriminate other people trying to do the same. We have to set the example that we want our future families to follow. We should not become predators or let others think you are the prey, we should be the one taming the predator, and the one helping the prey.