Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis

First published: 2004

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Bildungsroman; social realism

Time of work: Early twenty-first century

Locale: Flint, Michigan

Principal Characters:

• Luther T. Farrell, a precocious fifteen-year-old living in a housing project in Flint, Michigan
• Sarge, Luther’s mother, a tough-minded entrepreneur, landlord, and loan shark
• Sparky, Luther’s closest and only friend
• Chester X. Stockard, one of Sarge’s residents, a retired railroad porter who becomes Luther’s surrogate father

The Novel

At the age of fifteen, Luther T. Farrell helps his mother, known as Sarge, run a real estate empire in the ghetto of Flint, Michigan. His father is dead, and Luther has been raised by his mother, who left teaching to take a lucrative job on the Buick assembly line in Flint. She has since branched out into shady business operations, which she is grooming her only son to run. Luther has heard stories concerning his mother: The rental properties and group homes she owns barely meet city codes; she uses the residents in her homes to gouge the Social Security system; most disturbing, she runs a loan shark operation and even uses an intimidating second-in-command, Darnell Dixon, as muscle.

Luther, meanwhile, has his own ambitions: He wants to study philosophy at Harvard University. In return for the hours of work Luther has put in, Sarge has been putting aside an education fund, now worth more than ninety thousand dollars. That money is Luther’s ticket out of Flint. His only friend, the goofy Sparky, lacking such resources, schemes to get out of Flint by suing someone rich.

Luther discovers a stash of pills in the mattress of one of his mother’s tenants. He suspects the tenant, Chester X. Stockard, is hoarding the pills to use to commit suicide. The encounter, though, leads the two to become friends. Chester tells Luther bluntly that his mother is using him and will never let him go. Chester advises Luther to move with him to Florida. Luther refuses, but his situation changes when his science fair project wins a gold medal (it is his third gold medal, an unprecedented feat in his school’s history).

Luther’s science project concerns the dangers of lead paint and the corrupt landlords in Flint who continue to use it. The project’s findings outrage Flint’s mayor, who attends the award ceremony and promises a swift crackdown. It has not occurred to Luther, however, that his mother will be a prime target of this crackdown. After the assembly, she quietly tells Luther that when she returns from a weekend trip to Washington he must be out of the house.

Luther decides that before he leaves he will take with him the college fund that is rightfully his. He goes to the bank but finds only nine hundred dollars in the account. Ever cool, Luther cleans out his mother’s safety deposit box, finding more than fifty thousand dollars in it. He then uses his power of attorney to sell the group home’s van, which, in addition to the money from the deposit box, gives him roughly the amount his mother owed him.

In his mother’s safety deposit box, Luther also finds evidence that Sarge had bribed the judge of last year’s science fair, so he visits the girl who came in second in that fair and gives her his medal. He sets about tying up other loose ends as well: He gives new clothes to his mother’s tenants and fifteen thousand dollars to a classmate whose family Sarge had evicted. He promises Sparky that he will send for him in three months. He transfers ownership of Darnell’s expensive car to himself. Then, Luther and Chester take the car and head to Florida.

The Characters

Bucking the Sarge is an ensemble novel; Christopher Paul Curtis grew up in Flint and creates believable secondary characters, anxious and desperate, who are trapped in an economically distressed city. The novel, though, centers on the tension between Sarge and Luther, who is its first-person narrator. Luther must reject his corrupt mother to stand up for himself. This situation represents a break from Curtis’s earlier novels, which had endorsed the value of a supportive family.

Sarge—her name suggests her preference to be feared rather than loved—attempts to impart to her son the toxic philosophy that money is everything. Her abandoned teaching career, the long dull hours at the car assembly plant, and her assorted illegal schemes have created the security she sees as an end that justifies the means. Her exploitation of the African American community in the Flint ghetto never concerns her. Only gradually do Luther and the novel’s readers fathom Sarge’s shocking willingness to exploit her own gifted son. Not surprising, Sarge ends the novel unredeemed.

As a role model for an African American urban adolescent, Luther challenges stereotypes: He avoids drugs; he loves school; he is celibate (his wallet contains an ancient condom that he has had for so long he has given it a name); and he avoids confrontations. His science fair project reveals a compassion for those in Flint’s forgotten neighborhoods, the very people his mother exploits. If Luther is precocious, however, he is only book smart—his wisdom is shaped by the neat logic of science and garnered from the cable television he watches as he supervises the group home. He only pretends to be an adult—he has a fake driver’s license and an impressive array of credit cards. Only after he understands the paradox of his parasitic mother does he achieve adulthood. Before he leaves Flint, Luther—who has studied karma—balances the wrongs to which he has been a party through his association with his mother. His moral identity secure, he heads to Florida a man.

Critical Context

Although Bucking the Sarge is most reliably approached as a coming-of-age narrative, the novel also critiques the capitalist embrace of materialism as an agent of corruption, an evil that abides no racial distinctions. Money drives Sarge and justifies her amorality. Indifferent to the consequences of the economic catastrophe that has gutted Flint, Sarge looks out only for herself. Drawing on the harsh criticism of capitalism found in both Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, Bucking the Sarge is a strident reminder of the corrosive influence of wealth. Curtis is not naïve—after all, he abandoned his education to work more than thirteen years at a mind-numbingly dull but lucrative assembly-line job and, when he returned to school, was forced to pay for his education with menial jobs. He understands the importance of money. Indeed, Luther heads off to Florida with more than fifty thousand dollars to ensure his dreams. That contradictory sensibility—asserting that money is both the cause of evil and the stuff of hope—makes Bucking the Sarge a far more complicated read than much young adult fiction.

Bibliography

“Christopher Paul Curtis.” Contemporary Authors Series: New Revised Series. Vol. 119. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 2003. Analyzes Curtis’s early life and his first two works. Cites as themes the importance of self-respect, the need to accept life as it is, and the validation the self receives from a loving family. Positions Curtis as one of the few writers specifically interested in African American young adult fiction and the importance of offering that audience a literature of hope.

Curtis, Christopher Paul. “Christopher Paul Curtis Goes to Powell’s.” Interview by Dave Weich. http://www.powells.com/authors/curtis.html. Extensive interview that reviews Curtis’s place in young adult fiction (specifically his thematic interest in identity and family) and his literary influences. Emphasizes that his works are not exhaustively defined by an African American sensibility.

Gaines, Ann G. Christopher Paul Curtis. Hockessin, Del.: Mitchell Lane, 2001. Brief biography geared toward a young adult audience that stresses Curtis’s decision to leave work on the assembly line to pursue writing. In the hands of one of the most prolific writers of young adult nonfiction, Curtis’s biography becomes an inspirational tale about believing in dreams.

Lamb, Wendy. “Christopher Paul Curtis.” The Horn Book Magazine, July/August, 2000. Offers a helpful overview of Curtis’s life, particularly the long road to his first publication, which was not released until he was forty. Traces the themes of childhood and maturation and Curtis’s juxtaposition of comedy with social realism.

Tarbox, Gwen. “Christopher Paul Curtis.” In St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers. 2d ed. Detroit: St. James Press, 1999. Focuses on Curtis’s first novel and its interest in the Civil Rights era. Stresses his willingness to introduce mature themes such as racism, violence, and political hypocrisy and to confront cultural problems in young adult fiction. Cites Curtis’s street-smart realism, his believable characters, and his humor.