Knowing no better way, Alfred and his best friend, James, have spent much of their childhood trying to escape their lives through fantasy. The movie theater symbolizes an important means of escape for the boys. While watching a movie, they can enter a world of action and adventure. Interestingly, they often side with the hero's adversaries. Identifying with the underdogs, they cheer for the Indians to defeat the cowboys and for the monsters to prevail. On the streets, Alfred also sees men whom he admires, adults with suave manners and sophisticated ways, like the characters he sees in the movies. When a pretty girl his age sits beside him on the subway in Chapter 4, he longs for some kind of crisis so the he can come to her rescue, introducing himself as the leading man might in a movie: "I'm Alfred Brooks, may I be of service?"
Television serves as another means of escape for Alfred. On television, Alfred sees more of the fantasy world beyond Harlem: a speeding stagecoach, shooting Indians, "Uncle Harry" on a children's show greeting the "Kiddie Klubbers." The people on television are almost always white, and they live in a world foreign to Alfred. In Chapter 2, he watches a white family whose mother is pretty and slim and whose husband is tall and handsome. Their kitchen is shiny and as big as Aunt Pearl's entire apartment. The dog, Gus, can romp across a huge lawn under trees. Little Billy, their son, secretly builds a robot in the garage. At seventeen, Alfred is skeptical about the accuracy of the depiction, but he wonders if some people really do live that way.
