Black Boy by Richard Wright is a story of a young African American boy who struggles to seek justice through the cruel south. At first he doesn’t know anything better, but he soon begins to think that things get better up north. The novel elicits the inferiority of African Americans back in the day based on strong, dynamic characterization, descriptive setting, and first person narration portrayed by Wright. After having moved from the poor conditions of the south in search for a better life, Wright soon came to realize that it was no different anywhere else. He was still frowned upon because of his skin color. He was still treated like he was anything less than a human being.
In order for Wright to feel like he was the same as everyone else, he first had to realize that people of different races are going to undermine and treat those who are a different skin color from them because they feel as if they don’t belong in the
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Eventually, he learned that the south was not the right place to be for him to feel appreciated, something most would think of as normal nowadays. Following countless hours of working and cleaning for white people, Wright eventually made just enough money to get a bus ticket up north, where he believed he would be free of oppression. He believed that he would be able “to live with dignity” in the north (Wright 234). However, it was all the same. Same name calling. Same ugly looks. Same lifestyle. After completely turning his life and character around in search for a better life, Wright soon came to realize that the north was no different from the south. It was still a place of intense racism where whites and black couldn’t share the same water fountain, much less the same public
In turn, it was clearly an insult toward Wright’s style and intentions in literature. Baldwin was certainly aware of Wright’s intentions as he was familiar with his work. Afterall, Wright was idol for many years. In Wright’s essay, “Blueprint for Negro Writing” it is evident that the essay is intended for a black audience. Wright is critiquing black writers for being too artistic.
This can be seen in the first few paragraphs of the book in the house of Wright’s grandmother in Mississippi. His grandmother is sick, and Wright has been warned several times by his mother to keep quiet; however, his rebellious personality is immediately revealed in the dramatic gesture of setting the house on fire. I believe that Wright’s insubordinate temperament will lead to him breaking the law later in the novel. Subsequent Reaction: According to the novel my prediction was validated as Wright starts to bootleg liquor in a hotel.
Although both Richard Wright’s “Black Boy” and James Weldon Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” tell the tale of a black or not so black man facing the turmoil of segregation. There is a very distinct difference in both tales. Most notably, both men have very different living conditions and take contrasting approaches towards life. James Weldon Johnson’s “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” takes a very different approach on the entirety of the white or black, segregation issue that so many books have done well. Instead of telling the tale of a struggling black male, fighting to keep a job, moving from home to home as in Richard Wright’s “Black Boy”, but instead tells the side of a “white man”.
“I was white, I was different; I was superior”, McLaurin said when explaining the way that whites would act around blacks (Separate Pasts p. 14). While McLaurin has observed the mistreatment that blacks were subject to, he’s not fully able to understand it as a child because he’s fortunate enough to be raised in a decent home and never missed a meal, like Wright. From the start, McLaurin never had anything negative to say about blacks. Although, McLaurin admits that he didn’t seem them as equals, but viewed them as “individuals” rather than just a typical servant (SP, p. 22). McLaurin frequently interacted with blacks since he worked at the corner store owned by his grandfather.
The overall theme for the book “Black Boy” is you work hard enough you can become anything despite your physical appearance, for instance in Richard's case it was his race. The motif “hunger” ties back with the theme because in RIchard's case even though he was dirt poor he still worked hard to get whatever money he could earn and feed himself and his family. So Richard worked hard to earn money even though his race didn’t make it easy to. The motif “violence also ties back to the theme because violence was a big part of Richard's childhood. Again, although Richard faced violence, discrimination, ect.
Wright uses diction in the beginning of the memoir when he says,"I saw the signs on water fountains and toilets, 'White' and 'Colored', and I knew that I was 'Colored'. I saw the frightened eyes of my mother, and I felt the nagging hunger in my stomach, and I knew that I was 'Colored' in a society in which 'Colored' was synonymous with 'Nobody" (Wright 12). This quote uses imagery to show the ways in which racism was a constant presence in Wright's life, it shaped his experiences and his personal outlook. The signs on water fountains and toilets serve as symbols of the racial segregation that defined the South. The fear in his mother's eyes and the hunger in his stomach reflect the impact of oppression in their lives.
The pages 50-51 of Wright’s Black Boy, depict the reunion of Richard and his father, twenty five years after they had last seen each other. In this event the two are shown to be “forever strangers” (Wright 51), with the father now being a sharecropper in Mississippi. Wright uses tone, imagery, and characterization to portray the difference in character between the two, caused by the environments they lived in and the way society is structured. The way Wright describes the event in terms of tone is telling of how the experiences shaped their lives in different ways.
Wright had stepped to the side to allow the people to walk past him when his friend, Griggs, “reached for [his] arm and jerked [him] violently, sending [him] stumbling three of four feet across the pavement.” His friend was trying to teach him how to “properly” get out of white peoples ways because when white people are around Richard “acts…as if [he] didn’t know that they were white.” Wright, being a very rebellious child, seemed to stem his rebellion into a tone that whites took as a sign of utter disrespect. This, though, only seemed to be a part of southern ways, as Wright later explains how, in Chicago, some female workers at a small café would rub up against him as they were walking by. If something like this were to happen in the South, even if it was the white woman’s fault, Wright could have been sentenced to death simply because of the color of his
In the autobiography “Black Boy” by Richard Wright, Richard learns that racism is prevalent not only in his Southern community, and he now becomes “unsure of the entire world” when he realizes he “had been unwittingly an agent for pro-Ku Klux Klan literature” by delivering a Klan newspaper. He is now aware of the fact that even though “Negroes were fleeing by the thousands” to Chicago and the rest of the North, life there was no better and African Americans were not treated as equals to whites. This incident is meaningful both in the context of his own life story and in the context of broader African American culture as well. At the most basic level, it reveals Richard’s naïveté in his belief that racism could never flourish in the North. When
In Black Boy, Richard Wright leads a difficult life, yet he is able to persevere through it. Richard has an independent personality that protects him from getting betrayed, but his stubbornness causes him trouble to adapt to a better life. His superior intelligence gives him an advantage over others and makes him think about the future more than others, but they mistreat him for it. Because of his high intelligence, he shares a different moral of equality that makes him stand alone against the whites. The unique personality and beliefs of Richard Wright, like his stubbornness to change, lead to a life of isolation that caused his actions to deviate towards conflict pushing others away.
Racial segregation affected many lives in a negative way during the 1900s. Black children had it especially hard because growing up was difficult to adapting to whites and the way they want them to act. In Black Boy, Richard Wright shows his struggles with his own identity because discrimination strips him of being the man he wants to be. Richard undergoes many changes as an individual because of the experience he has growing up in the south and learning how to act around whites.
In the memoir “The Black Boy” by Richard Wright, it tells a story in first person view of a young six-year-old boy who lives his life during the Jim Crow time period. The memoir tells a story of young Richard growing up in the south, living with his family he experienced many struggles growing up, beaten and yelled at by his family; his mom, grandmother, employer/employees and the kids at school. He would try his best to learn what he considered acceptable to the society and what is not. Due to his race, skin color, and the time period, he struggles to fit in with the people around him, and all he wish he could do is for everyone around to accept who he is. Wright tries to convey this theme that Richard tries to join the society on his
The chain reaction resulting from the American culture of the 1930s is what Wright is trying to exploit. Wright uses Bigger’s story to represent the product of this cultural hardship. Insight on Bigger’s thoughts and actions allow us to see how these social prejudices influence the life of African Americans. Wright’s main goal was to emphasize on the psychological effect racism had on African Americans. Wright intentionally did not represent Bigger as a hero.
Wright’s critique of racism in America includes a critique of the black community itself—specifically the black folk community that is unable or unwilling to educate him properly or accept his individual personality and
Wright is best known for a lot of exceptional pieces of literature such as “Blueprint for Negro Writing” which is somewhat of a declaration of independence from Harlem Renaissance writers. Richard Wright was born 1908 on a plantation near Mississippi. Wright personified the classic American dream. He went from being deprived intellectually and in poverty to a figure stone in literature. It was Wright’s childhood that shaped his dream for getting an education.