Breaking The Society Norm In Richard Wright's Black Boy

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.

Though his education is ruined and disrupted, Richard seems not to give up. Instead, he is more strong and ready to conquer all his life’s challenges. In Richard’s life, the hardest challenge is racism, and it is a problem among many other black people during that period. Black Boy, however, discovers racism not only as a loathsome belief held by hateful people but also as an insidious challenge that has fabric roots in the society. For Richard, he discovers that the challenge of racism does not simply exist but its roots are so deep in the American culture.

Growing up in Mississippi in 1908, a southern state with extreme discrimination and segregation, Richard Wright went through many tough times living there as a young, black man. He was constantly insulted, looked down upon, beaten, and was threaten many times simply due to the color of his skin. However, through the darkest days of his life, he read books and obtained knowledge on the controversial topics of racism. As he grew older, he was determined to become a writer no matter what people say. He wrote his own autobiography, Black Boy, to express his life struggles and hopefully influence the minds of his readers, who went through extreme discrimination, to speak up for themselves. Even though that racism was harsh and intense in the mid 1900s, through the Civil Rights movements, racism was softened and many barriers, that prevented blacks from doing what they wanted have been removed. If Wright was to write a book in 2018, he would write about the violence of police brutality, black’s unemployment rate, and the first black president that marked a huge victory against racism.

Racism was a big issue in the south in the 1940’s. Racism was a major issue in the south back then because of all kind of reasons for example the KKK, and the laws that would make the blacks inferior to the whites in the southern society. The author Richard Wright wrote the book Black Boy about his own childhood. Richard Wright’s writing was influenced by his experiences with racism, Jim Crow laws, and segregation in the south in the early 1940’s.

Race plays a large role in who and how we define ourselves. The question time and time again asked is who hold the key in deciding who do someone allow to define along with the limitations of such assumptions us and can the limitations how society views us hold the black individual(s) back. In this response I will focus on the idea of “Racism and its effects on individual experience”. Throughout the novel Wright tries to come to terms with the idea to come to terms with individual identity, conformity/rebellion, and revaluation of the self.

starts school, which he begins at a later age than other boys because his mother

What is the first step to accomplishing a goal? Don’t you have to have a goal in order to accomplish it? Everyone deserves to have aspirations. In the past, people in power have tried to keep everyone beneath them by discouraging their aspirations for a better life. Richard Wright from the book Black Boy, John H. Johnson from the article Celebrating the Life and Legacy of John H. Johnson 1918-2005 and many other people listed in the article Whose Canon? Gwendolyn Brooks: Founder at the center of Margins, have experienced this first hand. But in the end, aspirations lead to accomplishments if you have the power to overcome others doubts.

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.

Richard Wright’s theme in Black Boy is that of survival. In his autobiography, he struggles to pull through life by rebelling. He rebels in many ways. In the first stage of his life, when he is just a young boy he often rebels against his parent’s authority. When he is a young adolescent, he rebels against being beat unfairly or into submission. As a young man, he fights against the Southern way of African American life. As Richard Wright grows, his rebellious acts grow larger and more daring in order to survive the harsh Jim Crow life of the South.

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.

     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.

Within Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy, Wright depicts his rough, cold progression of life as a young black boy trying to find a greater purpose and meaning for his life as well as for blacks as a whole. His hunger for equality and purpose is prevalent throughout the novel, and Wright’s purpose in its presence is to prove to his audience the truth of the black way of life. He realizes that his audience lives in stark contrast to his life, with their suburban culture, and uses it to tailor his novel to better communicate his story of black reality. Within Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Wright effectively understands the homogenous, sheltered background of his audience, and utilizes it to further demonstrate to his audience his true experience as a “black boy,” and the true experience of black America, to hopefully unite the races at last.

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.

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.

“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