In these few weeks, Alfred’s attitude slides from euphoria to dejection. He still relies on others to confirm his own worth, and he is terribly impatient—two sure signs of immaturity for Lipsyte. Alfred wants to move along in his training, but the Donatelli code demands that no one is special and each man must earn his own way.
Lipsyte’s style captures the tedium of the daily workouts at the gym. He repeatedly quotes the trainers as they demand more and more of Alfred in the boring but necessary exercise of shadowboxing: “Left . . . left . . . snap it out, Alfred, . . . left . . . right . . . right . . . left . . . left-left . . .” Like all beginning boxers, Alfred has trouble holding his arms up and continuously punching, three minutes at a time, over and over.
Lipsyte’s imagery is again effective. He uses simile (comparing one thing to another with the use of “like” or “as”) to make his point. Angel and Jose, the Puerto Ricans, cackle “like hens” when the medicine ball knocks Alfred over “like a tenpin.” As Alfred gets into the routine and begins to get in shape, the days roll off “like perspiration,” a very apt simile. The Friday night street scene evokes the provocative mix of excitement, danger, and despair that seems to lure Alfred toward trouble. Children play in the gutter, their playground. Each street corner anticipates action of the night. The sun goes down, and music fills the street from windows. It is too hot to sleep, and why should he sleep anyway? So he can rise before dawn and fill yet another day with tedium? The party at the clubroom is very tempting to Alfred in this atmosphere, and he wants to see James. Most of the temptation, however, comes from within.
Willie Streeter appears again as a negative example. He returns to the gym “sullen and overweight.” Willie is what Alfred could become at his worst. Willie has given up. He goes off to training camp in the mountains with Mr. Donatelli to train for a fight out of town, but he loses the fight anyway, primarily, we can assume, because of his bad attitude and lack of commitment.
Of special significance is the return of Major. He buzzes around Alfred like a flea in his ear, whispering temptation. When Alfred meets Major on the street, his adversary is cloying and artificially friendly. Major wants to get past his earlier threats, which turned out to be empty. Major wants to be a part of Alfred’s life because he sees that Alfred is going somewhere. But Major doesn’t just want to ride along; he wants to derail the train. He knows that the best way to reach Alfred is through James, so he tempts Alfred with an invitation to a party at the clubroom that James will attend. Throughout the novel, Alfred runs into barriers not from the outside world but from Harlem itself. Major wants Alfred to fail so that Alfred will be back on the same level as Major is, maybe even a notch lower. Henry sees Major’s hypocrisy and tries to guide Alfred away, but Alfred must make his own decisions, and he is about to make a bad one.
