Social Conditions in Slapboxing with Jesus: "Slave" and "Ghost Story" Gulfam Dhillon College

In Victor Lavalle’s Slapboxing with Jesus the neglected, maimed, and the damned people of New York are put in the spotlight. The people that are described are not thrown in situations without reason, their social condition puts them in their situation and keeps them there. The need to escape from an environment which has consistently neglected drives the characters in the stories “Slave” and “ghost story”. The character Rob in the story “Slave” is faced with the condition of neglect since he was a pubescent boy; this environment pushed Rob to become a child prostitute and the environment forever changed his mentality of life. Lavalle also writes about Sammy in “ghost story” a man that suffers from mental illness, a combination of schizophrenia and paranoia, so that his illness is regarded with the contempt which prevents his movement in society. The influence which has marked the lives of both Rob and Sammy is a stamp that has been put on them by their social condition. Wherever they go, even after “escape”, they will carry a remnant of the stamp.

Rob was led into the life of prostitution because of how society has neglected him. Rob, a child prostitute, was abandoned by his parents in a city of riches: Manhattan. How was it...