Bud, Not Buddy Themes

Bud, Not Buddy, a novel by Christopher Paul Curtis, is the story of a 10-year-old orphan named Bud Caldwell who must fend for himself after he flees his hometown of Flint, Michigan, in search of the man he believes to be his father, Herman E. Calloway. Carrying nothing but mementos of his dead mother, Momma, in a raggedy suitcase, Bud rejects the abusive care of the Amoses, the foster parents that…

Bud, Not Buddy follows the perspective of 10-year-old Bud Caldwell as he navigates the world of adults armed only with his suitcase and list of rules he created himself. As an orphan on the run, Bud appears to have a tense relationship with adults, whom he frequently views skeptically. Oftentimes he relies on his rules, “Bud Caldwell’s Rules and Things to Have a Funner Life and Make a Better Liar Out of Yourself,” to outsmart…

Bud, Not Buddy tells the story of the orphaned Bud Caldwell, a young boy who has been living between foster homes and an orphanage since his mother passed away four years ago. While on the surface, Bud’s story is about his search for the man he thinks is his father, Herman E. Calloway, and his journey from Flint to Grand Rapids to find him, it is also a story of Bud’s search for…

Orphaned at an early age, Bud has to navigate the world of racial prejudice and inequality that he’s coming of age in during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Despite Bud’s age, he shows a keen awareness of race and the way it functions in society, such as when he asks Deza Malone why some of the white people in Hooverville were “off alone.” Deza answers that it’s because they insist that because they’re white…