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Diction And Analysis Of Bluebeard In Richard Wright's Black Boy

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This text is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy. Richard is a young naive boy who lives in a religious household with many restrictions . He is a troubled kid due to his huge curiosity and determination achieve his desires. In this excerpt Richard urges Ella, a schoolteacher who works for Granny, to read him a ‘forbidden’ book. Ella refuses, knowing Granny would be angered by reason of her strict and religious beliefs. After Richard constantly nagging her, she starts reading the book called Bluebeard, a story about a man who kills his wives. Richard is instantly filled with excitement which soon is ended when Granny overhears and punishes him. While granny is disciplining Ella and Richard, she explains violent books …show more content…

After Granny discovered Ella reading Bluebeard to Richard, she screams in disgust and Richard interrupts , “ “But, granny, she didn’t finish,” I protested, knowing that I should have kept quiet. She bared her teeth and slapped me across my mouth with the back of her hand.“You shut your mouth,” she hissed. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” “But I want to hear what happened!” “ (39) . By employing a violent tone in the dialogue , Wright emphasizes how loud and angry he argued against Granny because he felt irritated by her interrupting the story . Granny’s angered tone demonstrates how negative she felt about Richard being exposed to violent books due to her religious beliefs that disapprove of them. This dialogue demonstrates how Richard’s desire to continue the story ignited his violent protest against his grandmother who was trying discipline and protect him. In the dialogue, Richard states that he knew to stay quiet but he protested anyway this shows that his desire to keep reading pushed him to argue with Granny. After Granny finished yelling at Richard and claimed he was going to hell, Richard explained, “ I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were and read them to feed that thirst for violence that was in me, for intrigue, for plotting, for secrecy, for bloody murders. So

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