Tight

The protagonist and first-person narrator of Tight, Bryan is a sixth-grader who lives with his parents and older sister in a low-income neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. An African American of Puerto Rican descent, Bryan has a “light caramel” complexion. His sister, whose complexion is darker, used to tease him about his origins, making him worry that he was not a true member of the family. With no brothers and with a distant father who is often in jail, Bryan has felt lonely for some time, partly because his mother, trying to protect him from bad influences, has dissuaded him from having friends. Bryan is very close to his mother and considers her to be his best friend. He also studies hard in school to please her. His other great love is superhero comics, though he can rarely afford to buy them. One of his favorite thought experiments is to evaluate the powers of various superheroes (Batman, the Flash, Black Panther, Luke Cage, Daredevil) and imagine which ones he would like to have.

Like his classmates, Bryan uses a fair amount of slang (“kicks,” “heads,” “dope,” “lit,” “props,” etc.), both in conversation and in his narration. One of his favorite words (“chill”) reflects what he most values in life: moments of peace and tranquility, free from the “drama” of his raucous, tension-filled neighborhood. Afraid of being labeled “soft,” he is equally resistant to being pulled into conflict. His aversion to stress and conflict is what makes his friendship with Mike so problematic, for although he longs for companionship and occasional excitement, Bryan eventually realizes that Mike is an unreliable, manipulative person who does not have his best interests at heart. Finally, through his climactic fight with Mike, which he wins, he realizes that violence usually creates more problems than it solves. Ultimately, he learns to value the cool-headed intelligence of Batman or Black Panther more than the brute strength of Luke Cage.

The main antagonist of the novel, Mike, is a boy from a poor household who becomes Bryan’s friend largely because Bryan’s mother thinks that he might be a good influence on her son. Mike is about a year older than Bryan, has the same “Afro-type” hair, goes to the same middle school, and shares his interest in superhero comics. Because he gets good grades and seems polite and mature when adults are around, Bryan’s parents admire Mike and treat him almost like one of the family whenever he visits. However, in reality, Mike is a clever manipulator who only works hard in school to disguise his many misdeeds, which include forging notes from his mother, playing hooky, hopping subway turnstiles, and riding the outside of moving trains (“train-surfing”). A classic “Eddie Haskell” type (a manipulative character from the television show Leave It To Beaver), Mike is fawningly polite to parents, teachers, and social workers but derides such adults in their absence; a prime example occurs when he calls Bryan’s mother “OD corny” in an attempt to get Bryan to disobey her. Drawn to the thrill of dangerous and often illegal behavior, the slippery Mike usually gets away with his misdeeds and leaves other boys who have followed him (such as Little Kevin) to their fate. He shows little concern for the safety or welfare of his “friends” and puts them into dangerous or shameful situations seemingly for the fun of it.

In addition to this behavior, Mike always seeks to assert his superiority and dominance over his companions, whether by harassing them with unprovoked insults and bullying or by showing scorn when they prove their skills to be superior in some way (as when Bryan beats him at an arcade game). Eventually, Bryan suspects that Mike has no true feelings of friendliness toward him, but is merely using him for his own entertainment and egotism. Bryan finally has a violent confrontation with Mike and discovers that despite all his “friend’s” boasts, Mike is not a strong fighter. However, a slippery person like Mike still poses a threat to Bryan and his family so Bryan realizes that he must find a way to make peace with him.

Bryan’s mother, who works as a social worker at the local community center, is the novel’s moral center and the most important person in Bryan’s life. Through her job, she knows most of the people in their Brooklyn neighborhood, along with their needs and histories. Therefore, her job gives her a unique perspective on life and many insights on how to get along with others. Additionally, her oft-arrested husband, Joe, has taught her (through his negative examples) about the pitfalls of physical violence and having the wrong friends. She has tried to keep Bryan out of trouble by forbidding him from having close friends until he is old and centered enough to choose them wisely. However, she does make mistakes as well, for she trusts a bit too much in the rubric of good grades as an accurate measurement of moral fiber, and she is therefore taken in by Mike’s “good boy” act. Thus, she ironically introduces a bad influence into her son’s life.

Bryan values her companionship and good opinion more highly than anyone else’s, and this is why Mike, who coerces him into deceiving and disobeying her, is so disruptive to his life. Bryan considers his mother to be the relative he most takes after in personality and temperament, and he loves to “chill” with her in her office after school or on New York’s Promenade. Like her, he cherishes peace and tranquility, and she provides an oasis for him to tune out the noise, anger, and “drama” of the neighborhood in which they live. Ma represents all that he stands to lose by following the example of Mike, who thrives on drama and duplicity and does not care deeply about Bryan. After his fight with Mike, it is she who reminds him that getting out of a relationship, a conflict, or some other situation of one’s own making takes time and patience, and she emphasizes that violence is rarely the answer.

Unlike Ma, Bryan’s father has never given any of his children much attention or guidance. He has lost all contact with the three sons he had with a former partner, and Bryan notes that he spends “zero time” with Bryan or his sister Ava. What little guidance he does give his son runs counter to his wife’s advice to be open and accommodating to others. He often counsels that it is better to be feared than to be liked, and toward the end of the novel, he heartily approves of Bryan’s use of violence to settle his differences with Mike. However, this doctrine of violence has not worked out very well in his own life. For years, he has been in and out of jail for acts of violence committed in rage, and even in the midst of the novel’s primary events, he gets into another fight, which causes him to break parole and land in prison yet again. According to Ma, it is his temper that gets him into trouble—that and his susceptibility to peer pressure.

Sometimes, when people tell Bryan that he has his Pa’s eyes (such as when he is upset), he worries, because to Bryan, his father’s eyes have a “hyped, intense” look that he associates with his father’s violence, impulsiveness, and criminal record. Eventually, under the influence of Mike, who reveres Pa for his “gangster” reputation, Bryan begins to prize and even to cultivate this wild look in his eyes, since it makes him feel tough just like his father. Soon, however, he learns that this is a mistake. On a symbolic level, Pa therefore represents Bryan’s negative potential to make the wrong choices by succumbing to peer pressure, rage, and violence.