Analysis of The Corner

We regret to report another departure for Baltimore... (89)

Unashamed of limitations and unafraid of hard work (88)
A family man, he worked hard (92/93)
W.M. Moved to Franklin Square (93)
Urban migration made that area more crowded, more oppressive (93)
The scent of the game was in the air (94)
Franklin Square was dead and buried forever (94)
W.M. McCollough stayed (97)
He was a man of dreams and plans (96)
He had won victories as W.M. had (98)
Gary had made it (98)
Nothing could transform him into a drug addict (98)
The snake found Gary McCollough (99)
Gary was dead (531)
He turned fifteen and began slinging heroin (15)
DeAndre was a bright boy (99)
The life of a ghetto child (535)
DeAndre is an addict (535)
Bob Brown looks directly at him and steps past (158)
Fat Curt is the Corner (3)

-----------W.M. McCollough: Hard working family man who stayed.

Gary McCollough: A workaholic, a dead drug addict.
DeAndre McCollough: A ghetto child slinging broken dreams.
Fat Curt: Fat, weak, old, the corner oracle.

A New Beginning
The black exodus from the rural South in this century would utterly
transform the American cities of the East and Midwest (89).
Northern Cities offered a fresh start for those willing to take the
risk, but what appeared initially to be a helping hand, quickly forced
even the strongest families into poverty and depression. W.M.
McCollough moved to Baltimore as a teenager, with barely a couple

dollars to his name, but his strength and work ethic allowed him to
succeed against all odds. Although W.W. traveled a path strewn with
obstacles, he was bound to succeed from the beginning. He survived,
because he was an exception to human desire and selfishness, and
while hundreds of other teenagers were content with their life in the
south, W.M. was determined to find a better life. David Simon and
Edward Burns describe W.M. as, unashamed of his limitations and
unafraid of hard work (88), even though W.M. did not have a great
education or an extreme skill, he believed in himself and was willing to
work hard for his future without being influenced by the fate that
society had created for him.
W.M. is a unique human though. After searching for someone
with the strength and perseverance of W.M., it would be unlikely to find
his equal. It is therefore not surprising that W.M. could fight against all
odds and succeed, because there are very few instances that could
crush W.M.s spirit. After moving to Baltimore, W.M., was his own man
now, surviving in a new world (92), and although W.M. had the
strength to conquer this new world, he stood witness to the downfall of
hundreds of his peers, friends, and finally children as they fell victim to
the system that he worked so hard to share.

A Fatal Path

Dope and coke. Coke and dope. Twenty-four, seven: twenty-four hours
a day, seven days a week (4).
Gary appeared to be created in his fathers image, and at a
young age, Gary wanted to be out there, working and earning and
scheming (96), so that he could continue his fathers legacy of rising
above his predetermined fate. Perhaps this success came too easily to
Gary or it was merely an attempt to impress his father, but by the time
he had finally achieved ultimate success, he was not the person that
his parents had taught him to be. Wealth is not a measure of
happiness, and as Garys wife began to slip into the corner, Garys
success could not protect him from the temptation that had
surrounded him for so long. At the time, that Gary decided to stay on
the corner, he believed that he was just as strong as W.M., but once his
wife began to slip he could no longer fight the constant temptation that
corner life provided for a man with money. A man who seemed to
posses all of the strength and will power of his father was suddenly
dragged into the life of a dope fiend, and once Gary had taken his first
hit, the snake, of his addiction followed him to his death bed.
For your arrows have pierced me and your hand has come down
upon me Psalm 38 (100). Gary had been pieced by the arrow of
addiction, whose grasp proved harder to overcome than any of the
business or education related obstacles of Garys youth. With his
previous thirst for business and success replaced by, pride in the daily

struggle, in the full-time job that fiending is (193), Gary was in an

even worse condition than those junkies who had only ever known the
life of an addict. For Gary, he truly believed that since he had achieved
such great success in the real world, he could view himself as an
exception on the streets rather than just another dope fiend.
Unfortunately for Gary, he was not the exception, and although he had
possessed great strength at one point in his life, drugs had robbed him
of the ability to change his predetermined fate, and instead of proving
an exception to the system, he died an average dope fiend.

Broken Dreams
Trapped in a life of crime and hate, It seems the ghetto will be my
fate (535).
DeAndre was not given the same opportunity as Gary, and was
therefore marked by the fate of the corner at a very young age.
Furthermore DeAndre was a child of the Corner and he learned growing
up, In the Fayette Street rowhouses learning the manner by which
human beings get and take what they need from one another (231). It
is not surprising therefore that DeAndre started slinging heroin at age
fifteen, because when both of your parents are drug addicts, the corner
lifestyle is the only lifestyle you know. DeAndre was not given the
beneficial uprising that had been offered to his father, and it did not
matter that he was, a bright boy, because he was never given the

guidance to use his intelligence for good. Instead of schoolbooks and

life lessons, DeAndre was given a guide to the drug game and a quick
way to make an easy pay.
DeAndre represents the first generation of the new corner, in
which children are born into an eternal cycle of addiction, crime and
single parenthood. DeAndre was robbed of his childhood and was
forced to live his life with only the faintest glimmer of hope that quickly
faded into nothing. Since he was not given a childhood or a strong
mentor to guide him, DeAndre is incapable of providing the same
necessity for his child. Tyreeka was raising DeAnte alone (533),
because DeAndre had become so consumed by the drug game that he
had forgotten to be their for his son, so that he could prevent
becoming the exact same father for DeAnte that Gary had been to him.
DeAndre writes in a poem at the end of the book that he was, Trapped
in a life of crime and hate, it seems the ghetto will be my fate, and
although this sad reality may be the only reality for DeAndre, he has
lost sight of the one child that he can save from the same fate. In
conclusion while DeAndre may represent the first generation of the
new Corner, his generation marks the beginning of a repetitive cycle of
fatherless children that will continue to have less control over their own
fate until society wakes up and realizes that DeAndre was never even
given a chance.

The Oracle
To look backward across thirty years on the Fayette Streets of this
country is to contemplate disaster as a seamless chronology, as the
inevitable consequence of forces stronger and more profound than
cities themselves (86).
If W.M., Gary, and DeAndre represent the generations of the
corner, Fat Curt represents the endgame, which is to say that there is
no endgame. Society has pushed relics like Fat Curt aside and even,
Bob Brown looks directly at him and steps past (158). He is
disgusting, he is self destructive, but no one wants to deal with him,
because he is too much of a lost cause for society to help. Similar to
the children of the ghetto, society does not look directly at Fat Curt.
Instead they brush him aside and hope that he will die soon. However
just as soon as Curt dies, there are hundreds of new addicts willing to
take his place and continue the cycle. No one gets out alive (369), as
the old corner axiom says, and Curt is no exception to this reality,
because without a break in the cycle of the corner, there is no escape
besides death.
Fat Curt lives and breathes the corner, he is up with the earliest
junkies and goes in when the last ones have secured their blast, but he
is not above them in fact, he is worse off than many of them. It is a
miracle that Cut has lived this long, and it probably will not be long
before he dies, but his life and what is remaining of his destiny is the

fate of every single child born into the corner life. Finally from W.M. to
DeAndre, although each generation of the McCollough family may have
possessed the same potential at birth, the corner has created a
powerful weapon against the strength and confidence of any corner
child, and has all but assured that the next generation of McCollough
has no choice in his own tragic fate.

Works Cited
Simon, David, and Edward Burns. The Corner. Broadway, New York:
Broadway Books, 1997.