By Dahl Botterill
content warning: youth violence, sexual violence, rape
Sol Yurick's The Warriors is not a complex book, but it is at times a difficult read. A modern retelling of Xenophon's Anabasis, the novel follows members of a youth gang called the Dominators making their way across New York City. They make this journey twice. The first time is under the watchful eye of their leader, Papa Arnold, as they journey to an all-gang Grand Assembly at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. This trek occurs under truce, as each gang sends representatives to the Assembly. When the Grand Assembly devolves into chaos and violence, the boys are forced to undertake the return journey to Coney Island without their leader, through traditionally hostile territory with no expectation that any truce will still be respected.
The titular warriors are not good people. They are violent, aggressive individuals obsessed with maintaining reputations based on strength, sexuality, and a lack of any real empathy. They are also children. The oldest is still a minor merely approaching adulthood, and the youngest carries a comic book around with him that he loves because the illustrations mean that he can enjoy the book despite the fact he hasn't yet learned to read. This is part of what makes it a difficult read. All of these characters are boys that have been forced to 'grow up' too quickly, and 'growing up' in their environment is a largely negative development. They don't really mature as humans so much as they calcify into toxic men. Their lives are hard, and these kids survive and belong by devoting themselves to each other, but they bond through activities like assault, murder, and rape. The Warriors is a good book and an eye-opening experience, but it can be a very rough read sometimes, and will definitely not be for everybody.
First published in 1965, The Warriors was no doubt just as, if not more so, shocking for readers at the time, but I found it a particularly interesting read in an era that's put a name to toxic masculinity and similar concepts. The Dominators is a youth gang filled with boys masquerading as men, but the 'masculine' traits they've focused their attention on are a motley amalgam of comic and tragic. Being able to urinate the furthest is as much a badge of honour as being the strongest fighter or the most stoic and unfeeling. At one point, they challenge each other to stick their heads out the subway window to determine "the Man With The Most Heart"; the winner—and most manly—is the one who gets their head so close to the tunnel walls that his short hair is scraped, broken, and tinged gray by the walls.
The Warriors isn't all cruelty and mayhem. While much of the book focuses on the Dominators' actions, it occasionally provides glimpses into how one of the boys, Hinton, feels about everything he's involved in. He's conflicted at times, often uncomfortable, but he also doesn't really see any other options open to him. These are the people that have given him a place to belong, and whether it's a great place to be or not, it's what he's got. He is a child with little hope, and only one path that's openly visible to him. As much as the book tells a tale of violence and the pursuit of reputation, The Warriors is also a terribly sad book.