Each chapter [in A Hero Ain't Nothin but a Sandwich] is essentially a monologue delivered by each of the different participants in the story. This allows for utmost flexibility in portraying the conflicting interest of the several characters. It is difficult, though not impossible, to show a situation in all its complexity and yet convince a reader that it is a child's perception. Alice Childress avoids this predicament with a most felicitous result. No doubt the fact that she is a playwright has a great deal to do with her ability to let each character speak for him or herself.
The monologue technique not only has the advantage of describing the action from several vantage points, but it also enables the author to clearly show the discrepancy between what one character thinks he or she is doing and what is perceived by the others, without violating the integrity of any of them. This discrepancy between intention and result is most obvious in the case of Nigeria Greene, a black teacher in Benjie's school. He is, to hear him speak, a gung-ho black nationalist. He tries instilling in his pupils a sense of black pride. That, he feels, comes first, over and above any academic skill he might be able to impart to them. His room is decorated with portraits of Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Malcom X. He constantly runs at the mouth about those blacks who cow-tow to whitey's ways. But he is unable to escape the fact that being a teacher puts him in an economic bracket that pulls him toward the style of life more consistent with the white middle class than with most of his fellow blacks in Harlem. Nigeria Greene seems confused by this phenomenon, and the only thing he can do to protect himself from this inner conflict is to spout more rhetoric.
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