Belonging In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Black Boy is an autobiography written by Richard Wright from the age of four to his early twenties. Right from the beginning of the novel, Wright faces violence both mentally and physically. Violence is a theme that reoccurs throughout the novel frequently. To further understand why Wright acted violent and why he used violence so many times in the novel, three biographies were used. The biographies used as a lens to explore the meaning and importance of Black Boy were The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain by Langston Hughes, The Enduring Importance of Richard Wright by Milton Moskowitz, and Richard Wright Biography from Biography.

Each and every person on this Earth today has an identity. Over the years, each individual creates their identity through past experiences, family, race, and many other factors. Race, which continues to cause problems in today’s world, places individuals into certain categories. Based on their race, people are designated to be part of a larger, or group identity instead of being viewed as a person with a unique identity. Throughout Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard is on a search for his true identity. Throughout Black Boy, one can see that Richard’s racial background assigns him with a certain identity or a certain way in which some

In a quest for a sense of belonging and success in life as well as a need for survival and money from a steady job, Richard attempts to conform to the social rules of those around him and the expectations of how he must behave like a second-class citizen. To feel like a part of the community and to please his family in hopes of improving his home life, Richard begins to attend a Protestant church. He consents to become a member of the church and is baptized, but he does so to please his mother and because his need for association and acceptance with a group is immense. After the church service that night, Richard reflects, “I had not felt anything except a sullen anger and a crushing sense of shame. Yet I was somehow glad that I had got it over with; no barriers now stood between me and the community”. In addition to these expectations from his family and the black community he associated with,

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.” (Albert Camus, The Rebel) Black Boy is more than a mere autobiography, dealing with a man during the time of Jim Crow laws. Indeed, though the book is generally advertised as such, the greater theme here is not of the black man versus the white; it is of Richard’s fight against adversity, and the prevalent and constraining attitudes of not just his time, or the “White South”, but of the attitude of conformity throughout all time. Richard develops from birth to become a nonconformist; a rebel, and we can see this attitude throughout his whole life. As a child, he refuses to simply follow orders if they make no sense to him; for this, he is lashed repeatedly. As he grows older, he begins

The next form of hunger that Richard encountered was one for literature which seemed to give him a release from the suffocating reality of his surroundings. His appetite for literature became a defining characteristic as the novel progressed. Though her effort was short-lived, a boarder at his Grandma’s house, Ella, gave him his first taste of reading. “As her words fell upon my new ears, I endowed them with a reality that welled up from somewhere within me…. My sense of life deepened…. The sensations the story aroused in me were never to leave me” (Wright 39). In light of Richard’s continued pursuit for knowledge critic Dykema-VanderArk reflects that, “Richard's reading opens his eyes… ‘made the look of the world different’ and let him imagine his life under different circumstances. Richard eventually recognizes that the social system of the South strives to keep black Americans from just such ways of thinking.” His craving for literature sets him apart from most of the black community surrounding him.

2. The novel “Black Boy” by Richard Wright is structured into twenty chapters and two parts. Part one is about Richard Wright childhood and growing up in a difficult time where whites are cruel to all African Americans. Part two focuses more on Richard’s life as an adult and how he struggles to maintain a good job. The story starts from when he is a young child and to when he is an adult.

A lack of self-awareness tended the narrator’s life to seem frustrating and compelling to the reader. This lack often led him to offer generalizations about ““colored” people” without seeing them as human beings. He would often forget his own “colored” roots when doing so. He vacillated between intelligence and naivete, weak and strong will, identification with other African-Americans and a complete disavowal of them. He had a very difficult time making a decision for his life without hesitating and wondering if it would be the right one.

“Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.” –Richard Wright, Black Boy. The author suffered and lived through an isolated society, where books were the only option for him to escape the reality of the world. Wright wrote this fictionalized book about his childhood and adulthood to portray the dark and cruel civilization and to illustrate the difficulties that blacks had, living in a world run by whites.

In the beginning chapters of the book, we get a glimpse of the typical home and community of an African American during segregation. Many Africans Americans were too adjusted to the way of living, that they felt

Even though Richard knows he is black, he feels that he should still have the opportunities and fair treatment given to others, which is why he fights so hard for himself. Despite the fact that his friends and everyone around him tell him to act more “black”, Richard perseveres to create his own identity not shaped by racial pressures. Finally, Richard is able to get out of the South and head north, where he can be more himself and escape some of the racism. “An hour later I was sitting in a Jim Crow carriage, speeding northward, making the first lap of my journey to a land where I could live with a little less fear” (Wright 244). In order to create a life where he could be himself and not live in fear of being discriminated against for doing so, Richard is forced to leave his family and his hometown in the South. The fact that Richard was willing to leave everything he knew behind shows how strongly he believed in himself and the hope that he can be more himself in the North. Rather than constantly being torn between the stereotype of a black man and who Richard actually wanted to be, escaping to the North allowed him to be himself and create his own identity. Overall, Richard faces the struggle of his identity as a black man by fighting against the stereotypes in order to give himself a better

The time period of the novel created an uncomfortable setting for the prominent black characters in the story.  During the 1960’s, there was a prodigious divide between blacks and whites.  Being set during the time

In Black Boy, Wright expressed his childhood memories even though they were not very good. The critic, Adams, argues that Richard Wright shared his misrepresentation of his personality, rae, and family in his childhood by explaining that they did not help him. He believed that everyone prevented him from hearing or speaking the truth. The only time someone listened to him was when he lied (Adams). Wright was independent from his family early on in his childhood because he knew that they would not support his views and dreams in life. In addition, Robert J. Butler exclaims, “ … ‘red circle’ of flame which consume the curtains can be seen as a revealing symbol of Wright’s early life- a trap of spreading violence which can easily destroy him…” (Butler 62). If Richard Wright grew up to be who his parents taught him to be, he would never understand the danger of his childhood years. However, he did which let him leave it behind as soon as he could.

A place where everybody looks the same, act the same, and live the same, is a beautiful thing. Although, many times places that are full of people of the same hue, are there in that place by force. Those who were black and lived on Eighteenth and Vine were there because there was nowhere else in Kansas City that openly welcomed “black people”. As it says in the book, Some of My Best Friends Are Black, Eighteenth and Vine was the “black

Richard Nathaniel Wright was born September 4th, 1908 in Roxie, Mississippi. Born into a family of salves and sharecroppers, his life was not easy growing up. As a young child he experienced many hard times; such as the harsh racial discrimination between whites and blacks, as well as segregation amongst him and his own race. Once he grew older he became a man of many talents such as writing poems, novels, and even short stories. Mostly everything he wrote about was based off things he experienced as a child and teen growing up in Mississippi. His publishing’s gave a very pessimistic view towards racial relations.

Throughout the book Black Boy by Richard Wright sheds light on the interesting life of the writers personal memories. Richard is living in a community coming out of slavery as a first generation feeling freedom. His life starts off at a young age and spans through till his days as a successful writer. Many motifs throughout his life repeats in his writing topics. During his years fire is a common perspection expressed in many metaphorical ways and physical, this expression extends to his educational, religious, and psychological mindsets.