Summary
Chapter 1
Bud, a ten-year-old boy, and the other children at the Home are waiting in line for breakfast when they hear a caseworker come in. The lady walks up to Bud and confirms his identity, then calls over Jerry Clark. She tells them, beaming, that they’ve been placed in temporary homes. The boys are not particularly excited but she sternly tells them that this is the Depression and they should be grateful.
Bud is wary because it his third foster home, but he feels like he cannot cry anymore. Jerry, though, who is six, is sniffling because he does not want to go to a home with three girls. Bud tries to console him, saying that he's probably better off, than Bud, since the Amoses, with whom Bud has been placed, have an older boy who will no doubt want to fight him.
Later Bud thinks about how it is tough to be six like Jerry, because people start to think you are growing up and ought to understand things. Things also start happening to you, like your teeth get loose and come out and your tongue feels out of control when it happens. Sometimes you wonder what else will come off—an arm? A leg? Besides, Bud was six when his Momma died.
Before he goes to sleep he makes sure all of his special possessions are in his suitcase. There are the fliers advertising Herman E. Calloway and the Dusky Devastators of the Depression!!!!!! for a limited engagement. Another flier has a “Master of the New Jazz” on it that Bud suspects is his father. The man stands next to a huge fiddle and looks tired but dreamy. He looks friendly and smart. The show was in Flint, Michigan. Bud’s Momma had brought this home one day and kept looking at it. He could tell she was upset but did not know why.
Chapter 2
Next we see Bud already at the Amoses. He is thinking that there is a time to stop fighting back, and it is right now when Todd Amos is punching him in the face. Mrs. Amos bursts in and Todd pulls back and adopts a victimized expression and labored breathing. Mrs. Amos rushes to him and screams at Bud that this is the way he has repaid her for her generosity. Todd continues to fake-blubber.
Bud is actually impressed at Todd’s fakery, especially when Todd accuses Bud of being a bed-wetter. It seems like Todd knows some of the things Bud has devised for his own list of rules, entitled Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself. This one was clearly telling simple and easy lies.
What had actually happened was that Bud had woken up with pain in his nose because Todd had shoved a pencil way up into it and was chuckling viciously. Bud doesn’t care that Todd is older and bigger, and swings at him. The two scuffle. Bud realizes that even though Todd is a dumb rich kid he can still hit, and that is when he stops.
Mrs. Amos tells him he is a brute and she will not have him in her house anymore. Mr. Amos enters with Bud’s suitcase. Mrs. Amos sternly tells Bud she does not have time for people of her own race who do not wish to uplift themselves, and she plans to send him back. Mr. Amos will show him to the shed, where he will stay for the night, and he can think about what he has done. Bud is half-listening, wondering if his suitcase is okay and how he can get revenge. Mr. Amos tells him that they will hold on to his suitcase as insurance.
Mrs. Amos adds that he must say sorry to Todd or she will whup him again, and Bud agrees. He is still impressed by Todd’s acting but decides he ought to offer Mrs. Amos an apology because it is what she wants. She cuts him off and Todd gleefully warns him about vampire bats and insects.
Bud peers around the room before he is marched out and sees his suitcase under the kitchen table as well as a shotgun. Mr. Amos takes him to the shed and nudges him in. Bud is terrified of the cold and dark, but says nothing. He sees spider webs and dark patches in the dirt. Mr. Amos hands him a blanket and pillow and shuts the door, locking the padlock.
Chapter 3
Alone in the dark, Bud realizes he needs to move around. His eyes become accustomed to the dark and he tries the doorknob. He looks up and, to his horror, sees three fish heads with bright yellow eyes guarding the door. Their mouths are full of teeth and Bud throws a rag over them to cover them up.
He does not know where would be best to sleep, and remembers when a cockroach climbed into his friend Bugs’s ear (that’s how he got his name). He set his blanket on the woodpile and climbs on it. There is old newspaper covering the windows. He scrapes some of it off and gets a hole large enough to see out of. A light from the Amoses' bedroom comforts him enough and he falls asleep.
When he wakes he wishes he were still asleep. Above him is a massive vampire bat that will no doubt wake up any moment and attack him. He grabs a rake and prepares to kill it. He also opens his pocketknife. He swings, but to his horror, he realizes it is not a vampire bat but a hornets’ nest. He is stung over and over again and tries to get out of the shed but the door will not budge. Finally he busts the window and rolls away as far as he can.
Away from the hornets, he is utterly furious and starts to think how he can get even.
Chapter 4
The kitchen window is unlocked and Bud slips in. He checks to see that his suitcase is still there, takes it outside, then looks at the gun. He pretends to shoot it but he knows he cannot play with it. He moves it away.
Bud then gets a glass of warm water and slinks to Todd’s room. He dips the boy’s finger in but nothing happens so he then just dribbles it on Todd’s pajama pants. Todd twitches, and then wets his bed. Bud can barely control his laughter, but picks up his suitcase and heads out. He feels just like Public Enemy Number One.
Chapter 5
Being on the lam is fun only for a few minutes, and Bud worries about getting out of the neighborhood as soon as possible. He decides to go to the north side library where Miss Hill might help him, but when he arrives he is dismayed to see it is closed and there are bars on the windows. He will have to stay outside near the Christmas trees where he cannot be seen.
When he opens his suitcase he can tell it was rifled through. It doesn’t look as if anything was taken, but he checks. There is the tobacco bag with rocks and a picture of Momma (in which she looks very unhappy even though she is sitting on a horse; she’d told him her father was mean and made her wear a gross, germ-filled old hat). Momma was always full of energy like a tornado, and he remembers her insisting that he not let people call him Buddy—only Bud. A bud was a flower-to-be, a flower-in-waiting. She promised she’d tell him about a lot of things when he got older, but she used to say that when one door closed another one opened. Bud didn’t understand that at first, but now he does.
Bud curls up to sleep, planning on getting to the mission as soon as possible, before he gets hungry.
Analysis
Bud, Not Buddy is a book written for children ten years and up, but it can certainly be enjoyed by older readers. Indeed, its subtle but astute commentary on the Depression, race, social class, and more make it an entertaining and useful read for all ages. Younger children may not pick up on all of the different tensions present in Bud’s world, but they still glean much about the difficulties of life in the 1930s and particularly those facing a young boy bereft of a family.
The Great Depression as context is key to the events and themes of the novel. Bud’s lack of parents is not specifically caused by the Depression, but it's also important to note that more children than ever lacked parents at the time, because those parents were roaming around looking for employment. Bud is in a Home, a common place for parent-less children, but the Home and the mission and other charitable organizations are strained due to the influx of newly needy people. Bud plans to head west by riding the rails, which was a common plan amongst men and boys anxious to see if conditions were better elsewhere. He stays in a Hooverville for the night, which allows readers to see what these shantytowns were like. Overall, Bud’s personal struggles are exacerbated because the country is also in dire straits and help is less easy to come by; they are also affected by Depression-era racial tensions. As this is a children’s book, Curtis softens some of the race-based threats Bud could putatively face, but they are nevertheless there in the penumbras of the text (more on this in other analyses).
One other contextually significant element in these first few chapters is the Amoses’ “uplift” philosophy. Not only are Mr. and Mrs. Amos callous and self-righteous, their rationale behind taking in these children from the Home and then routing the ones who do not behave is part of this trend among middle-class, educated African Americans in the Post-Reconstruction era. Professor Kevin Gaines explains: “From [African American leaders’] perspective, to ‘uplift the race’ meant [that they] combated stereotypes by emphasizing class differences among blacks that echoed the stereotypes themselves… Against pervasive claims of black immorality and pathology, educated blacks waged a battle over the representation of their people, a strategy with ambiguous implications and results. They referred to themselves as a “better class” of blacks, and demanded recognition of their respectability, and privileged status as agents of Western progress and civilization. But in doing so, they ushered in a politics of internal class division. In other words, this method of opposing racism tacitly echoed dominant ideas of class and gender hierarchy… By affirming their respectability through the moralistic rhetoric of “uplifting the race,” and advocating the moral guidance of the black masses, African American middle-class leaders and spokespersons were marginalizing the idea of uplift in its more democratic and inclusive sense of collective social advancement and demands for equal rights. Many black spokespersons sought to resolve this tension between individual and group status by insisting that individual achievements benefited the entire race.” Of course, most of the novel isn’t explicitly about these historical elements, but instead is about Bud himself. It is told in first-person by Bud, who immediately reveals himself to be smart, plucky, adventurous, determined, imaginative, and playful. He never knew his father and his mother is deceased, but he does not dwell in his sorrows. He brings comfort to other children who are suffering and tries to put himself in the mindset of others. He isn’t afraid of change and embraces new opportunities. He isn’t perfect, of course, and has to have his revenge on Todd. He is also impetuous and jumps to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence (this, after all, leads him to mistake a hornets’ nest for a vampire bat and conclude that Lefty Lewis is a vampire).
One of the most memorable components of the book is Bud’s list, which has the long but memorable title of “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things for Having a Funner Life and Making a Better Liar Out of Yourself.” Though the word “liar” might connote something problematic, in reality the list is really just a survival code for a young black boy in racist, Depression-era America without parents or any means to support himself. The list consists of things such as making lies simple and easy to remember; giving adults just enough to satisfy them; if you make up your mind to do something, do it right away; when adults tell you not to worry, now is the time to worry; and many more. It is clear that these rules can be very useful for navigating problematic situations; they also demonstrate Bud’s intuitiveness and social savvy.
Curtis alludes to the central conflict of the book early on: Bud thinks Herman E. Calloway is his father, and will eventually plan to find him. Bud later provides his reasoning for this belief, and while it’s not rock-solid, it is hard to categorically dismiss. The fliers with Herman on them coupled with Bud’s mother's behavior in regards to them give Bud enough to make the conclusion he does. Those fliers he treasures are some of the several items he carries around with him in the old suitcase. While modern readers may no doubt marvel at one’s possessions being so limited, as Bud’s are, the sense that somewhat ordinary items can be imbued with deep and profound meaning is recognizable to most children (and adults!).
