Richard Wright 's Black Boy

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.

In the book Black Boy by Richard Wright, Wright details his life as a black child in segregated America. He also writes about the abuse he faced as a child from the hands of his family. They would often beat him without telling him why, leaving the young boy terrified of doing wrong. At one point, his mother almost beat him to death at four years old (Wright 7). All in all, this abuse had a huge affect on Richard’s personality and actions as he matured. As he ages, Richard begins to develop the tendency to isolate himself from the rest of the world. It worsens as he ages, but from a very young age he begins this habit. One can argue that this habit may have just been a natural part of his personality, but one can not ignore the role his abuse

“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

Desires of all types plague the human mind constantly. Certain desires are obvious and necessary, such as food and water. Others are more unique to humanity, such as education, respect, and love. When something or someone seems to stand in the way of an important yearning, desire becomes hunger. Over the course of world history, minorities have been repeatedly denied some of their most basic desires. An example would be the treatment of African-Americans in the United States until the later twentieth century. In Black Boy, Richard Wright characterizes his own multi-faceted hunger that drove his life in rebellion throughout the novel.

The main plot of “Black Boy” is about the author Richard Wright struggling childhood and how he survived all the things he went through. Richard Wright suffered so much throughout his life but mostly during his childhood. His father left when he was very young so his mother had to work all day to support them. Even though his mother worked two jobs she still

“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.

Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908 on a Mississippi plantation. Richard was an author wrote controversial novels, poems, non-fiction and stories. Wright was the most influential African-American in the twentieth century. He was a grandson of slaves, so most of Wright’s work was involved in racial subjects. Which concerned African-Americans during the nineteen and mid-twenties century. Richard’s life was rough, his father abandoned his family when Richard was only five years old, he didn’t rarely had food in his home, he started late school because he didn’t have clothe to wear, he never graduated high school, and was beaten severely. Richard wrote books like “Uncle Tom’s Children”, “Native Son”, and “Black Boy”. The writing of Richard

"Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." This passage written in Black Boy, the autobiography of Richard Wright shows the disadvantages of Black people in the 1930's. A man of many words, Richard Wrights is the father of the modern

In Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, Richard experiences both literal hunger and hunger for equality. The many obstacles in his life positively transform his outlook and attitude towards the deficiency of food and racial disparities. Richard develops into an improved person after the many happenings that he gets himself into, and all of his experiences entirely prepare him for his future. Richard Wright is hungry throughout the first nine chapters of his memoir no matter where he lives. Whether it was Mississippi or Arkansas, Richard was hungry most of the time due to not having an efficient amount of food being put on his plate.

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

Hunger is powerful feeling that all people endure sometime in their life. Whether it is literal or metaphoric hunger, it is an inevitable sensation that occurs in varying degrees in one’s life. In the book Black Boy, the narrator, Richard Wright experiences both literal hunger and a hunger to understand racism. The first type of hunger Wright experiences is literal and is quite common throughout the beginning of his life.

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.

keep your mouth shut or the white folks Ôll get you too." As a teenager Wright

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.