Richard Wright's Summary: Fighting Words

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.

“Huck Finn” story can be a debatable when it comes to history, and what the story is about. Some argue that Mark Twain’s abuse of using the “N” word triggers racism especially that this book was written when slavery became illegal. As one student said, "It is estimated that the word nigger is used 392 times which reinforces a negative stereotype of African Americans represented by the use of this derogatory word" (Jackson). Some can still argue that this book can be a bad influence to the youth as they might be using the “N” word as a racist rant. For some, it is very disturbing, upsetting, and bringing back the past.

We are off on the oregon trail, the Swansons kept their promise and asked the clines if we could join, after some negotiation and the conformation of me being a blacksmith, they said we could tag along, once we had left I thought all of our problems were over but I was wrong after a while we had reached a hill, and our oxen couldn't pull all of our supplies, we had to get rid of the piano my wife, that was enough for the oxen to slowly pull the wagon up and over the hill. We have reached the kansas river it had taken us two days to reach from independence, we had arrived just as the raft had left to take the last of a wagon train to the other side, once he returned he had told us it would be one dollar to cross after awhile we had

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.

"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

Maybe they can locate the contact. “Were there any identifiable features with this southern man?”

always been told what they can and cannot be because of the color of their skin. Many African

Wright was one of the first American writers to confront racism and discrimination (Fabre 102). Through the book Eight Men, which includes this story, Wright alienated impoverished black men who

Racism is still alive in America. It is not as overt but its presence is still felt. I believe there is power in words. The Bible says there is death and life in the power of the tongue. Words can either be used to edify, uplift and encourage or they can be used to tear down, demoralize and debase. Which do you choose? In this essay I will attempt to analyze how African Americans have reclaimed a term that has been used for numerous years to negatively characterize their race and them as people. By changing the spelling of nigger to nigga and using it to express positive attributes such as brotherhood and inclusion it has aided

Black Boy Research Paper Richard Wright. He was born after the Civil War and died before the Civil Rights Movement. Richard Wright absolutely hates racism and injustice to blacks. Richard made that clear in his book Black Boy. However, some ask what would Richard write about if he was alive now?

     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.

   In the early twentieth century black American writers started employing modernist ways of argumentation to come up with possible answers to the race question. Two of the most outstanding figures of them on both, the literary and the political level, were Richard Wright, the "most important voice in black American literature for the first half of the twentieth century" (Norton, 548) and his contemporary Ralph Ellison, "one of the most footnoted writers in American literary history" (Norton, 700). In this paper I want to compare Wright's autobiography "Black Boy" with Ellison's novel "Invisible Man" and, in doing so, assess the effectiveness of their conclusions.

I can tell you from personal experience what "fighting words " are. These are words that are used to invoke violence or to bring on a violent situation. These words are intentional and are used to make the person they are used to towards act in a violent manner. There is a point or line or limit in everyone's behavior where they judge whether something is a threat. It's sort of a trigger word. When certain things are said or done it crosses that line and gives a negative reaction. Triggers can be anything from money to sounds. Social psychologist suggest that conflicts are often triggered by fear. The frequency and intensity of these conflicts decrease positive emotions and increase negative emotions. (Caldara, Mcbride, &Mccarter, ECT, 2017).

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.