Summary: The Effects Of Richard Wright's Stuggle

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

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.

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.

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.

The Impoverished lives of many African Americans in the south during the Jim Crow era were the result of unfairly low wages and racial discrimination, which oftentimes led to families going hungry. This was the unfortunate reality of a young Richard Wright’s life as a child in the 1910’s. In his novel, entitled “Black Boy” Wright details the adverse conditions of his young life, recounting an existence consumed by familial abuse, racial prejudice, hunger, and a yearning for more. The description of Richard Wright's physical hunger in his novel “Black boy” serves as a metaphorical vessel, as well as literal cause, of his ultimate “Hunger” of knowledge and success.

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.

Hunger is a unique feeling because its meaning is limitless. Although the term “hunger” is typically associated with a lack of food, it can be simply defined as having “a strong desire or craving” (“hunger”). In the novel, Black Boy, Richard Wright recalls the constant hunger pains due to living in poverty. However, Richard experienced alternative forms of hunger that pushed him to overcome adversity. Richard Wright’s success as a writer, even changed the way people looked at African Americans during the twentieth century. Without Richard’s lingering hunger, he might have succumbed to the racist regime of the South rather than controlling his own destiny. The physical hunger that Richard Wright experienced served as a reminder of his persistent hunger for knowledge, understanding, and love which ultimately lead to his growth as a person.

From the early 1900’s, Richard Wright was always isolated from his environment. Even though he tried to distance himself from the prejudice all around him, the white people still tried to turn him into the stereotypical southern black person. However, throughout the story Richard is also alienated by his own people and perhaps even more then from the white people. Sometimes when you succeed in life you have to fail before. All professional athletes have failed a lot in their ball games but they get back up and they learn from their mistakes and try it again. Donald Trump for example he was once in debt about 830 million dollars, but he came back from that and he is one of the most successful people in America today. That just proves that everyone who is succeeding in life fails many times before. Santiago in this book did the same exact thing but he came out successful.

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

Throughout history, oppression has been used to keep the privileged in power and others subservient. Richard Wright, born in 1908, knew exactly how this felt. He recorded the experiences of his early life in his novel, Black Boy. From a young age he was faced with constant racism, and forced to adapt his life because of it. Black Boy’s protagonist exemplifies how an oppressive society forces an individual to comply with its standards, but also incites rebellion.

The entirety of the novel Black Boy by Richard Wright is composed of scenes that are meant to strike the audience. Whether it be through a stark use of pathos or a technical use of logos, each scene is calculated. However, two scenes tend to stick out in the mind’s eye. They specifically offer an extra sense of reality to the already raw story that is presented. As a well-known author, Wright employs language in order to get his stories across.

Wright’s inclusion of the term “American Hunger” in the title also makes a statement about the impact of race on American life in the early 1900s. Including it behind Black Boy in the title of the complete memoir (published in 1977) speaks to the fact that in many ways, “American Hunger” was synonymous

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’s novel, Native Son, depicts the life of the general black community in Chicago during the 1930’s. Though African Americans had been freed from slavery, they were still burdened with financial and social oppression. Forced to live in small, unclean quarters, eat foods on the verge of going bad, and pay entirely too much for both, these people struggled not to be pressured into a dangerous state of mind (Bryant). All the while, they are expected to act subserviently before their oppressors. These conditions rub many the wrong way, especially Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the story. Though everyone he is surrounded by is going through all the same things that he is, growing up poor and uneducated has made Bigger angry at the whole world. You can see this anger in everything he does, from his initial thoughts to his final actions. Because of this, Bigger Thomas almost seems destined to find trouble and meet a horrible fate. Wright uses these conventions of naturalism to develop Bigger’s view of the white community(). With all of these complications, Bigger begins to view all white people as an overwhelming force that drags him to his end. Wright pushes the readers into Bigger’s mind, thoroughly explaining Bigger’s personal decay. Even Wright himself says that Bigger is in fact a native son, just a “product of American culture and the violence and racism that suffuse it” (Wright).

Richard Wright was born in 1908, in Natchez, Mississippi. His mother’s chronic illness set the tone emotionally, in his life and writing. His grandmother practiced evangelism. The prayers daily, up to half a dozen. Although Wright’s food was already limited, his grandmother applied further dietary restrictions. Not only was he malnourished, he was also beaten throughout his childhood. Wright’s grandmother also did not allow him to participate in any form of entertainment or games. Whether it be a game of baseball or a board game, he was not allowed to partake in such activities. Wright did not have a proper education because of his constant moving back and forth from relative to relative. His schooling was broken. However, he did graduate from ninth grade at the age of sixteen. Violence and hunger were his childhood memories. Which made him bitter, leading him to join the communist party later in his lifetime. Wright’s majority of significant life events occurred in Mississippi, Chicago, New York and Paris (Bone 1). In 1927, Wright along with his family moved to Chicago, where he worked several jobs. During the depression, he was unemployed and placed in the South Sided Boys Club, by a relief agency, where he created the character, “Bigger Thomas”. Wright joined the communist party in 1932,