Themes in the Novel "Black Boy" Essay

Upon Richard's return to England, he learns of the events that had transpired in his absence. At first his own arrogance allows him to believe that since it is his God given right to rule as King, he will be protected. But then just as quickly, Richard's arrogance turns into despair upon the realization that Henry has gained support of the nobles and the people of England. Henry and Richard finally meet at Ramparts Castle leading to the climax of the play. Henry demands retribution for the allocation of his families' possessions and

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.

While his heart must be black, Richard must convey the appearance of a humble and gracious ruler.  He will say or do anything to gain and then to keep his crown.  Perhaps the most striking examples of this Jekyl and Hyde farce are his pledges of undying love for two women he plans to have killed, claiming that all the heinous acts he's committed were only for their love.

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.

In the story, Richard had mentioned about the loss of his identity, his speaks of language and his family. We can see that when he said, “I did not know that I had a family, a history, a culture, a source of spirituality, a cosmology, or a traditional way of living. I had no awareness that I belonged somewhere. I grew up ashamed of my Native identity and the fact that I knew nothing about it”. This shows he was angry that there was no one tell him about where he belonged and his culture.

“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 speaks about how people see him as a curse to the land and how he is unfit to be there. He does not like that and to prove everybody wrong, he will rise up to be king, no matter what he has to do. He even stated in his opening soliloquy that he will, “set my brother Clarence and the King, / In deadly hate the one against the other.” (I.i. 35-36). He can’t live his whole life being told he is a villian just because of his deformity.

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

Though Richard suffered abuse throughout his childhood without knowing why, he decided that he was going to change his attitude so he would never get in trouble again and change his future for the better. There are multiple incidents in the book where a member of Richard’s family has whipped him for actions he did that he did not fully understand, since he was still such a young child. Each time he was beaten he resented the person who beat him and was humiliated but as Richard got little older, he decided he wanted to change his actions that were causing his pain and embarrassment, and tried to please his family so he would never be beaten again. One night when Richard was only about seven or eight years old, his grandmother was giving him

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

In 1940, Richard Wright wrote a book that later became one of the greatest novels of American Literature. The book focuses on a young black male who takes a terrible journey after killing a white woman out of fear. Foster writes, “Political writing that engages the realities of its world- that thinks about human

This family wants Richard to marry a young girl named Bess that falls in love with him very quickly. Richard wonders how that was possible “They barely knew [him]; [he was]in the house but a few hours” (212). This shows Richard does not get attached to people easily and that he feels uncomfortable when around people that actually like him because he never felt that way before. As Richard explores more and more he questions where he belongs in the world, no place seemed right, both the “Negroes [live] in a world that was almost as alien to [him] as the world inhabited by the whites” (253). Even though he is black he does not fit in with his “own people” because no one shows the same way of thinking, no one sees a future of higher quality.

Even when Richard was a child his curiosity caused him to question the world around him and was determined to understand the “two sets of people who lived side by side and never touched, it seemed, except in violence” (Wright 47). Richard never got definitive answers and acted the same around whites and blacks, which was looked down upon in the South. One literary critic believes that “the hallmark of Wright's personal authenticity in Black Boy is not his refusal to conform to social demands; rather, it is his constitutional inability to conform though he is told repeatedly by blacks and whites who he is to be and how he is to act in order to get along” (Andrews). For instance, Richard’s friend, Griggs, attempted to teach Richard how to act in front of white people, but Richard was always “forgetting the artificial status of race and class” (Wright 185).