Somewhere in the Darkness is a 1992 young adult novel by Walter Dean Myers, dealing with issues of family, trust, and personal honor in the African-American community.
Crab is the father of protagonist Jimmy. He was imprisoned for killing a man and insists that he is innocent. In trying to reconnect with his son and regain his personal dignity, he half-kidnaps Jimmy and takes him to Chicago, financing his trip through theft of cars and money along the way. During the trip, Jimmy questions Crab's honesty:
"...steal[ing] some money or credit cards or something. That's wrong, too. It don't make you good just because you didn't kill nobody!"
"Sure it does. Sure it does." Crab took Jimmy's face in his hands. "Don't it make a difference if it's all I got left? What else do I have? I can't say I never stole anything. I can't say I was...
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a saint...."
(Myers, Somewhere... 1992, Google Books)
Crab has a personal moral system and, in that system, killing is a worse crime than stealing. In his mind, since he has been wrongly convicted of murder, stealing in the defense of his good name is a justifiable crime, minor in comparison. While Jimmy equates the two, Crab reasons that if he had been accused of stealing rather than murder, he would be better received by society. He knows he is not a perfect man, or even a good one, but he knows he is better than his reputation as a killer, and he desperately wants his son to accept him in that light, even if not as a "saint."
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