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Piri ThomasA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Heart” is mentioned almost incessantly in Down These Mean Streets. Though the term “heart” is always used in a positive sense, its meaning is not always consistent. Often, it means something approximating fearlessness, as is the case when, before a possible fight, Piri says to himself “Stomping time, Piri boy, go with heart” (48). Other times, it can mean something like earnestness: “if a guy gotta live, he gotta do it from the bottom of his heart; he has to want it, to feel it” (62).
When the inmates are rioting, the rioters’ hearts are synonymous with their guts: “they have heart, Piri, the fuckin’ kids got heart […] and all they’re getting for their guts are split heads and blood clots” (284).Heart can also be synonymous with instinct, and heart can be a source of empathy.
But a heart can be a source of too much empathy as well: “You had to be a lot harder to be a pusher; you couldn’t have a soft heart” (202). Heart has national and racial aspects: “we all got heart; very little of us are without heart,” Piri says about Puerto Ricans (214). And Piri’s dad is a “colored man with a paddy heart” (125).