Black Boy By Richard Wright Essay

Despite the disappointments that goes on in one’s life, failure can become a success. Richard Wright and Vincent Van Gogh are two examples of rags to riches. Richard had to overcome many obstacles to get where he is at now. Vincent dealt with illnesses and rejection most of his life. The one thing that both of these men have in common is they started off with nothing but ended up with something.

In Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Richard is struggling to survive in a racist environment in the South. In his youth, Richard is vaguely aware of the differences between blacks and whites. He scarcely notices if a person is black or white, and views all people equally. As Richard grows older, he becomes more and more aware of how whites treat blacks, the social differences between the races, and how he is expected to act when in the presence of white people. Richard, with a rebellious nature, finds that he is torn between his need to be treated respectfully, with dignity and as an individual with value and his need to conform to the white rules of society for survival and acceptance.

Next, “There is a large debate regarding why Black males are overrepresented in categories associated with negative behavior. The experiment conducted on this negative stereotype explored the influences on environmental lack of economic resources, social and political aspects related to academic performance of black males. The environment and culture can help shape the male’s performance. Resolutions to the many issues listed above are a work in progress. Organizations which include educators, parent and youth service providers are combining their energy to diffuse and redirect the matter. “The Trouble with Black Boys: The Role and Influence of Environmental and Cultural Factors on the Academic Performance of African American Males”, (Noguera ,2015 p.1).In brief, on the

In his autobiographical work, Black Boy, Richard Wright wrote about his battles with hunger, abuse, and racism in the south during the early 1900's. Wright was a gifted author with a passion for writing that refused to be squelched, even when he was a young boy. To convey his attitude toward the importance of language as a key to identity and social acceptance, Wright used rhetorical techniques such as rhetorical appeals and diction.

Black Boy is an autobiography of Richard Wright who grew up in the backwoods of Mississippi. He lived in poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and had rage towards those around him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about in taverns. He was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common people who were slaves or struggling.

While living in the South, Richard refuses to accept the racial stereotypes imposed on him as a black man. He tries to fight for himself to create his own identity until realizing that his only hope was to leave the South. On his high school graduation, Richard shows his strong heart by reading his own speech, rather than reading the speech written for him by the principal. He remembers, “On the night of graduation I was nervous and tense; I rose and faced the audience and my speech rolled out. When my voice stopped there was some applause. I did not care if they liked it or not; I was through” (Wright 211). Richard refuses to accept white people talking for him, as the principal had tried to, and speaks up for himself. Rather than conforming

“The Book of Negroes is a master piece, daring and impressive in its geographic, historical and human reach, convincing in its narrative art and detail, necessary for imagining the real beyond the traces left by history.” I completely agree with The Globe and Mail’s interpretation of this story. One could almost see the desolate conditions of the slave boats and feel the pain of every person brought into slavery. Lawrence Hill created a compelling story that depicts the hard ships, emotional turmoil and bravery when he wrote The Book of Negroes.

Richard Wright uses language in his novel, Black Boy, as a source to convey his opinions and ideas. His novel both challenges and defends the claim that language can represent a person and become a peephole into their life and surroundings. Richard Wright uses several rhetorical techniques to convey his own ideas about the uses of language.

The story Black Boy, written by Richard Wright, is a story about a boy’s struggle with himself and the world around him. A large part of this struggle comes from Richard’s loss of innocence as a young child. Throughout the story Richard shows he must be independent to continue living in his abstract life. Richard loss of innocence is shown consistently throughout the book and other articles relating to the book. Four different situations that portray this loss of innocence are as follows; separation of blacks and whites, burning a house down, killing a kitten, and the cruel experiences he had in his childhood.

African American boys are doubly displaced among society. Ann Arnett Ferguson says, “they are not seen as childlike but adultified; as black males they are denied the masculine dispensation constituting white males as being “naturally naughty” and are discerned as willfully bad”(page 80). These African American boys are thought of being two things, either a criminal or an endangered species. They are not allowed to be naughty by nature according to society, but rather there naughtiness is a sign of vicious, inherent, insubordinate behavior. African americans are seen as endangered victims, which makes them criminals. Ferguson states, “It is their own maladaptive and inappropriate behavior that causes African americans to self-destruct”(page 82). There are two versions of childhood that are contradictory to each other. A real child would be seen as a “little plants” ready to grow up accordingly which is what white men were like to educators. On the other hand the African American boys were seen as children who are powerful, self centered, and have an agenda of their own. These black boys are seen as adults from such a young age, they don’t have time to be young and grow up because others make it seem like they are already fully grown. This drives them in the path to do bad things and make bad decisions.

“Do you suppose they'll treat me as John Howard Griffin, regardless of my color—or will they treat me as some nameless Negro, even though I am still the same man?” (Griffin 10). In Black Like Me a white man named John Howard Griffin got to experience what it was like to be a black man during the Civil Rights Movement first-hand. Although Griffin got to see what it was like living as a black man, I do not believe that he can ever fully empathize with the black race. Yes, Griffin got to experience it for a few weeks, but he will never know what it is like to have to be treated poorly because of something you cannot change.

In Black Boy, Richard Wright, the protagonist of the novel, faces many decisions that he must make, but his moral dilemmas are the most important and make the biggest impact on Richard’s life. A moral dilemma is a situation requiring a choice between equally undesirable alternatives that is also concerned with goodness or badness of character. Richard’s moral dilemmas often decide whether he will survive in the South or not because they usually occur around conflict that can get Richard lynched. One moral dilemma that Richard repeatedly faces is whether to stand up for himself against oppression, and most of the time white people, or to stifle his emotions and let the situation go. More specifically, Richard faces this type of moral dilemma after he breaks his bike while he is out and is offered a ride to town by a small group of white boys.

This experience was not unique to Wright, however; it was a reality felt by many blacks sharing his time and place. Wright was growing up in the Jim Crow era in the South, when, despite the North having won the Civil War, blacks had been successfully segregated by law and custom in “practically every conceivable situation in which whites and blacks might come into social contact”. This was a time when signs dictating where blacks could and could not walk, eat, live, and enter were everywhere, impacting the daily lives of black Americans and shaping their mannerisms to a huge degree. Wealth, skill, and personality did not matter; if one’s skin was black, one was subject to these laws and customs. Thus, skin color at this time was the most significant defining feature among Southern individuals with or without their consent, and by using the term “Black Boy” in his title, Wright drew attention to and challenged this unjust reality of race relations during his early years.

     Richard Wright's novel Black Boy is not only a story about one man's struggle to find freedom and intellectual happiness, it is a story about his discovery of language's inherent strengths and weaknesses. And the ways in which its power can separate one soul from another and one class from another. Throughout the novel, he moves from fear to respect, to abuse, to fear of language in a cycle of education which might be likened to a tumultuous love affair.

Black Boy is a denunciation of racism and his conservative, austere family. As a child growing up in the South, Richard Wright faced constant pressure to submit to white authority, as well as to his family’s violence. However, even from an early age, Richard had a spirit of rebellion. His refusal of punishments earned him harder beatings. Had he been weaker amidst the racist South, he would not have succeeded as a writer.