Big Boy Leaves Home

“Yo mama don wear no drawers…

Clearly, the voice rose out of the woods, and died away. Like an echo another voice caught it up:

Ah seena when she pulled em off…

Another, shrill, cracking, adolescent:

N she washed ’em in alcohol…

Then a quartet of voices, blending in harmony, floated high above the tree tops:

N she hung ’em out in the hall…

Laughing easily, four black boys came out of the woods into cleared pasture.”

These are the opening lines of “Big Boy Leaves Home.” Wright chooses to introduce his protagonist, Big Boy, as one voice in an undifferentiated group, playfully singing a rude, improvisational song together. This beginning establishes the easy rapport between the friends and shows them being youthful and irreverent. They are bonding over a joke, albeit a misogynistic one. It also quickly marks the difference in tone between the narrator’s sparse but poetic descriptions and the vernacular voices of the characters.

“In the distance a train whistled mournfully.

‘There goes number fo!’

‘Hittin on all six!’

‘Highballin it down the line!’

‘Boun fer up Noth, Lawd, bound fer up Noth!’

They began to chant, pounding bare heels in the grass.

Dis train bound fo Glory

Dis train, Oh Hallelujah […]

When the song ended they burst out laughing, thinking of a train bound for Glory.”

This is the first instance of a train appearing in the story. Real and imaginary trains are a motif in “Big Boy Leaves Home,” and this early appearance establishes the train’s literal connection to the North and its symbolic connection with the escape from oppression. The boys immediately break into an African American gospel song after hearing the train, evoking the train’s meaningful connections to Black folk traditions. The train’s whistle is “melancholy,” just like the song, which is about salvation after death. Its melancholy tone also reflects the boys’ longing to go north and live in a place where they have “ekual rights.