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Literary Analysis Of Black Boy By Richard Wright

1422 Words6 Pages

Amber LaCourt
African American Literature
Professor Jackson
2/26/18 Midterm Final

In the passage “Black Boy” by Richard Wright expressed the difficulties defined as the “Negro experience”(Wright 247). Wright revealed later on in the passage that both African Americans and White people faced both psychological and emotional issues throughout the 1940’s. Surrounding the passage Black Boy by Richard Wright expressed the challenges and hardships that many Southern African Americans had experienced during the 1940’s. A line of great importance in this was “I had no hope whatever of being a professional man. Not only had I been so conditioned that I did not desire it, but the fulfillment of such an ambition was beyond my capabilities. Well-to-do Negroes lived in a world that was almost as alien to me as the world inhabited by whites” (Wright 147). This line conveyed both how African Americans were conditioned to not strive or reach for something that they wanted because they would be shot down or told that they wouldn’t be able to do it. Some themes presented in this passage was the idea of identification and both rejection as young African American male. With that in mind, Wright often infuses literary guides that show a sneak peek into his environment and life as a young man. He also likes to use folk and or blues culture in this passage, this has the power to change a readers attitude (Ellison 248). In

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