The Price of Manhood: An essay on Grant’s discovery of being

Grant’s unwillingness to cope with the repression of his black community by considering running away leads him away from being the man that they want him to be. When Grant returns years later after leaving to gain an education, he had become a secular, educated man, now distanced from his oppressed, yet religious black community. He discovered that he was still a "nigger" in the eyes of the white people. Such is made evident …

…no hope of change in his society. Grant not only rejected faith in God, but faith in his people. Even though it seems that Grant has not taken steps toward getting breaking the chain that white man continued to grasp on blacks, after he accepts his responsibility within the society he inhabits by teaching Jefferson to be man with dignity, Grant is able to discover the man that his society always wanted him to be.