Rebellion In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, to a poor family on a plantation in Mississippi. His father was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother was a well-educated teacher. Due to his family’s poverty they were forced to move to Memphis. When Wright was five years old, his father left his family for another woman, and his mother was forced to leave her job as a school teacher and do domestic work to provide for her family. As Wright grew up, he became involved with the Communist Party, and in 1940 he published Native Son. This success of Wright’s book made the black community proud of him, but it also brought a lot of uncomfortable feelings. They felt that the main character, Bigger, portrayed a stereotypical, harsh, black man the

If you were to think about the complications he dealt with, you would understand why he made the decisions back then—burning the house down (Wright 4), killing a cat at such a young age only to get his dad’s trust (Wright 11), going back to the store to get groceries but getting beat up instead (Wright 17), and more. Many people would think it was an ignorant thing of Richard to do at the time, however, they did

Richard did not understand until later that the black community discouraged his rebellious ways because following the expectations of whites was a way to ensure survival of the community. A rebellious act of one black not only put his or her life in danger, but also his or her family and the entire black community. Richard’s need to conform to the rules of the white society for survival and his need to rebel in order to achieve his humanity and individuality was a tension that infested him daily.

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.

“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 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.

From 1877 to 1954, African Americans in America did not have many opportunities in life due to laws set in place known as the Jim Crow laws (“Jim”). This caused them to live in fear and do whatever white people wanted them to do, to keep their lives out of harm’s way. Richard Wright, the narrator and author of the autobiographical novel Black Boy, is the opposite of those people. His story begins in the year 1912, where he is a young, innocent boy, knowing nothing about what is going on in the world around him. As he grows older, he begins noticing that people care about color, but he does not understand why. Later on in life, he has some run ins with people who want to take control of his life as well as the lives of other colored

In the novel “Black Boy” by Richard Wright, is the time period of the Jim Crow Law. This time period is when the whites ruled over any other race. Richard didn’t really understand how everything worked at the time. He had to learn the rough way how blacks had to behave when the whites were around.

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.

In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard subconsciously wants to move as far from his family as possible. For example, when his life takes a very fortunate turn, Richard encounters Mrs. Moss. When Richard first meets Mrs. Moss, he says, “I had met the warmest, friendliest person I had ever known, that I discovered that all human beings were not…like the members of my family” (Wright 210). Richard means that his family often disgusts him, and new people he meets are a welcome change.

Richard Wright’s Black Boy, some seventy-five years after its underlying production, still holds as one of the most far reaching and grasping takes on bigotry in the American artistic custom. Wright isn't fulfilled to just depict American bigotry as a deceptive method for survey of the world, or as a point of view held by various derisive people; rather, Wright underlines the way that the center of race and prejudice is in the very structure holding the system together. As such, Wright trusts that it would be, for all intents and purposes, difficult to describe American culture without prejudice. So, in spite of the fact that the specific occasions in which Wright is hurt by bigotry may have been executed by a limited number of people, Black Boy makes it obvious that these people are only after a considerably more extensive and more unpleasant example. Generally speaking, the mark of subjection and its related belief systems has created a perpetual underclass. The way of life, in which Wright grows up, purposely aims to hinder his abilities out of dread for what they may bring.

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.

Richard Wright explores the theme, one will often find that society’s expectations and beliefs may negatively affect an individual’s life through his autobiography, Black Boy. Wright employs an overstatement in his quote, “Kill that damn thing [kitten]” (Wright, XXX). Wright exaggerates the amount of anger that radiates from Richard’s father. Richard’s father comes home from a long night of work and he wants to rest, but the kitten continues to meow. The kitten refuses to quiet down and continues to disturb Richard’s father from resting peacefully. Richard becomes upset over his father’s expectations, since he insists on Richard to follow all of his commands and decides to avenge his frustration by taking his father’s command to kill the kitten literally. The hyperbole furthers Wright’s theme, society expectations may negatively affect an individual because society expects Richard to follow every command that he is given, without any question. Richard refuses to abide by his father’s will and finds that he suffers the consequences of his disobedience. Richard experiences a lot of guilt and his mother punishes him greatly for it. His mother forces Richard to kill the kitten, where he fears that the kitten’s ghost will come back to haunt him. Richard’s life is negatively impacted because he discovers that his rebellious act of killing the kitten failed to satisfy his drive of revealing his father’s misdoing. The scene holds significance because Richard killed the kitten by