I don’t really see Macon as a hero, because none of his intentional actions were heroic - sure, he died for his cause, but he sure didn’t want to. The things he did on purpose, starting the day of apology, robbing people, were not heroic at all and had serious repercussions, often ending in injury, chaos, and death. And when it came right down to it, he wasn’t able to stand up for what he believed in, and I think his cowardice in the last chapter is enough to put any reader off. He could be seen as heroic at the beginning of the novel for robbing white people, but I see that as more of an outlet for his destructive behavior, and not really an effective method for implementing the change he was supposedly working for.
I don’t want to make it seem like I’m painting a one sided picture, because I liked Macon (or was at least intrigued by him) at the beginning of the novel. Sure, the things he did were kind of problematic at times, but I think Mansbach was showing us a person who genuinely did care, but maybe didn’t go about it the best of ways all the time. However, I feel like as one gets further and further into the novel, you see the eventual disintegration of Macon’s ability to follow his moral compass driven by his cowardice.
I guess what genuinely enrages me the most about Macon and his actions in the last chapter is the overall hypocrisy of it all -- he spent about 200 pages demonstrating how “down” and “woke” he was, and yet when any of that really mattered, he couldn’t stand up for what he believed in. It just gave me an extreme amount of dissatisfaction and sense of anticlimactic-ness, in the midst of a whole bunch of confusion over what exactly happened in the last pages of the book. Overall, while I think Angry Black White Boy was an interesting novel to talk about, but I don’t really see Macon’s actions as heroic in any sense of the word.
