Growing Up

Education is important to Lucy. After her father’s death, she had to drop out of college and was not able to get the best teaching positions as a result. She wants Baker to “make something of himself” and sees college as a necessary step. One of Baker’s early memories is seeing his father delight his mother by calling Baker smart and saying they should send him to college. When Baker enters school and shows an aptitude for it, Lucy vigorously supports him. She insists he enroll in competitive City College High School, which will earn him a year’s worth of college credits, even though they do not know whether he will be able to afford college. When Baker returns from his Navy service, he enters the workforce, but Lucy badgers him to return to Johns Hopkins.

Baker internalizes his mother’s belief in the importance of education. With his mother’s help, he achieves success in school, and this fuels how highly he values it. It makes him stand out and gives him an identity. At the same time, succeeding in school makes him an outsider in his community, as Lucy’s education made her an outsider in Benny’s rural Virginia community. Baker is disappointed that his mother marries Herb not only because Baker resents being displaced as the man of the house but also because Herb is uneducated and lacks intellectual interests.