The Role Of Hunger In 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 troubled world in which we live in, it is almost impossible not to find someone who is experiencing hunger in any one of its forms. Whether it is for food, for knowledge, or for love, hunger is everywhere and it mercilessly attacks anyone, young or old, black or white. In Richard Wright's autobiography, Black Boy, Wright suffers hunger for love, hunger for knowledge, and hunger for what he believes is right.

His resolve to rise above his broken beginnings persisted while many other black people essentially ceded power to the dominant white population. He was never afraid to question what shaped his life, despite opposition, and he started with his lack of sustenance. Physical hunger was a critical factor in Wright’s existence that underscored his actions and gave weight to Black Boy.

“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.

"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

My attempt to comprehend the guiltless letters smothering the lifeless tree in my hands was of interruption as the bus flew over another speed bump. The predestined occurrence led to a sigh, Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy, no longer in my hands, and the bus driver silently cursing under their breath once the rear end of the yellow mobile and a mailbox kissed. Contemplations about the book clouded my thoughts, but my hand didn’t have the audacity to pick up the autobiography and bring it to my eyes once more. Alternatively, I peered out of a dirty window and questioned the horrors previously read about Richard Wright’s childhood. ‘What exactly were his intentions?’, ‘Why were so many rhetorical devices used?’, and ‘When will racism

Sufferings of Blacks Richard Wright depicts the United States through many of his hardships that he went through in his youthful years in the early 20th century and how he has overcome them. In Wright’s Black Boy, Richard associates his hunger and oppression with the United States. He associates these things with the United States through his childhood history of starvation, abuse, and cruelty from the family and society around him that made his family become unsupportive and uncaring towards him. The aspects that he associates these things with the United States are racism and ignorance to his kind of people. Wright is trying to bring awareness to the American society of the kind of difficulties that he had and many others like him and

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.

Richard Wright’s life was characterized by poverty which stemmed from the racial issue pervading the South. In an attempt to overcome this impoverished state, his family moved from city to city, hoping to live with a relative and share the cost of living and also to escape the severity of racial discrimination. With each move, however, Wright’s family constantly faced unjust treatment and poverty until they moved in with their Uncle Hoskins who owned a successful saloon.

Gender inequality, “natural” gender roles, body image, and false romanticizations of food are enforced and portrayed through society’s commercials and advertisements. There are underlying and subliminal messages in many advertisements that create a hyperreal reality that influences people’s views and understanding of gender roles. In “Hunger As Ideology,” Susan Bordo discusses which advertisements portray a false reality and how it effects woman and men in society.

Hunger is a motif in this novel, because it reoccurs throughout the novel; sustenance is part of human nature and the human nature as a whole. Chris’s journey stars off when he donates all of the money in his bank account to OXFAM, a national hunger organization. He works at McDonald’s and farmer’s market, is offered Gallien’s lunch on his way to Alaska, and eventually dies of hunger. When Chris dies, his mother and sister are unable to eat and lose a substantial amount of weight. However, his father ends up over eating and gains weight.

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

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.

The African-American literary period of Realism, Naturalism, and Modernism, also referred to as the Age of Wright, was when the writers and artist would expose the realities and identities of living in America and the harshness of society. This African-American literary period would begin around the time the Great Depression ends and would end the year in the death of Richard Wright, which was 1960. One of the most notable writers of this period was, of course, Richard Wright. By his way of thinking and the way he wrote literature, “Wright [had] effectively executed his own blueprint by rejecting what Locke termed the ‘decadent aestheticism’ of Harlem Renaissance writers and by drawing on the presumably more ‘nourishing’ elixir of Marxism and social protest” (Gates, 97). Richard Wright’s Blueprint for Negro Writing appeared in the journal New Challenge that he and other African-American writers had published in 1937. Although Richard Wright’s Blueprint for Negro Writing was written before 1940, this literature work makes an excellent representation of Urban Realism. This text represents this literary period because it tells about the reality, but also the promotion of success in African-American literature by criticizing black culture and nationalism in literary works.

In “A Hunger Artist”, Franz Kafka utilizes his skill as a writer and a poet to allegorically tell the reader of his own suffering through a tale of an artist’s slavery to his craft. Kafka’s own life parallels the plot and characters of this short story in elements such as starvation, obsession, and loss of will as they are explored in the plot of this work. Whether intentional or not, his comments on isolation, suffering, and art become a mirror to his own psyche and allow the reader a look into the mind of the genius who penned the work. The deteriortation of the title character in “A Hunger Artist” highlighted by autobiographical elements in the work exemplifies