The Ideas Expressed In Black Boy By Richard Wright

Richard’s grandmother, a devoutly religious person, has an underlying grievance with Richard because he is not religious. Richard’s grandmother begins to shelter him by not buying him books which he needs for school. Richard explains, “I needed textbooks and had to wait for months to obtain them. Granny said that she would not buy worldly books for me” (Wright 143). In addition, Richard claims that his Granny always burned the books he had brought into the house, “branding them as worldly” (Wright 151). Richard needed money to buy his books, some new clothes, and lunch during the week at school. However, his grandmother continues to shelter him by not allowing him to work. When Richard asked to work on the weekends, Richard explains that “she laid down the injunction that I could not work on Saturdays while I slept under her roof” (Wright 147). These two instances with his grandmother show Richard’s ambition. Richard wants to make something of himself, and does not want to sit back and live the usual life of a black

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.

Throughout the book, Richard shows ignorance when it comes to race issues. He often doesn't know how to respond or act when he is being harassed about his race. This ignorance comes from his family refusing to tell him about what was happening in the world when he was a child. At one point, his mother even slapped him for asking about why there was segregation and about why his grandmother is “white” (46-48). These events and actions in his youth would lead to him being ignorant of these issues in his adulthood, which would lead to Richard being isolated from both the black and the white communities. First, one example of his separation from the black community is when Richard refuses to steal from white people. “More than once I had been called a ‘dumb nigger’ by black boys who discovered that I had not availed myself of a chance to snatch some petty piece of white property that had been carelessly left within my reach”(199). The other boys call Richard out because he refuses to steal. He does this because he was raised not to steal from white people while the other boys were raised to take advantage of their position in life and use it to their advantage. This gap between knowledge of how one should act leads to Richard being isolated from the other boys and others in the black community. Likewise, Richard ignorance of race issues leads to a rift between him and the white community.

The next form of hunger that Richard encountered was one for literature which seemed to give him a release from the suffocating reality of his surroundings. His appetite for literature became a defining characteristic as the novel progressed. Though her effort was short-lived, a boarder at his Grandma’s house, Ella, gave him his first taste of reading. “As her words fell upon my new ears, I endowed them with a reality that welled up from somewhere within me…. My sense of life deepened…. The sensations the story aroused in me were never to leave me” (Wright 39). In light of Richard’s continued pursuit for knowledge critic Dykema-VanderArk reflects that, “Richard's reading opens his eyes… ‘made the look of the world different’ and let him imagine his life under different circumstances. Richard eventually recognizes that the social system of the South strives to keep black Americans from just such ways of thinking.” His craving for literature sets him apart from most of the black community surrounding him.

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.

While Richard was growing up he was never treated like a kid, his father always saw him like a grown man. His father was a person who wanted all his commands to be done as he pleased. He is also

In Black Boy, Wright expressed his childhood memories even though they were not very good. The critic, Adams, argues that Richard Wright shared his misrepresentation of his personality, rae, and family in his childhood by explaining that they did not help him. He believed that everyone prevented him from hearing or speaking the truth. The only time someone listened to him was when he lied (Adams). Wright was independent from his family early on in his childhood because he knew that they would not support his views and dreams in life. In addition, Robert J. Butler exclaims, “ … ‘red circle’ of flame which consume the curtains can be seen as a revealing symbol of Wright’s early life- a trap of spreading violence which can easily destroy him…” (Butler 62). If Richard Wright grew up to be who his parents taught him to be, he would never understand the danger of his childhood years. However, he did which let him leave it behind as soon as he could.

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.

Richard realizes a way to reject the comforts of religious belief to be assimilated into

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.

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.