Despair In Catcher In The Rye And 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.

According to Frederick Douglass, “it was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it (p.4).” Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison literatures examine the stigma of slavery, and the perceptions of its dangers. They illustrate what life was like and the mental as well social impact it had on enslaved African-Americans and their life after gaining freedom. Richard Wright convinces his audience in Black Boy that he was tired of the limitations and outcries in the South “I was not leaving the South to forget the South, but so that some day I might understand it, might come to know what its rigors had done to me, its children (284).” Alice Walker obtains her readers attention by transforming young women into their own characters with a voice using spiritual guidance. In Native Son, Bigger has achieved is lost after being apprehended and brought into captivity, as he transitions back into silence and passivity and begins to recover only in his final confrontation, whereas Douglass in the same prevailing convention, only heals after the regaining of his freedom. Through these literatures, and many others, African-Americans find multiple ways to alleviate and recover from the intensity of undesired bondage and bigotry.

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.

Richard Wright’s autobiographical novel, Black Boy, illustrates his character development. He encounters a lot of hardships which he eventually grows from. Throughout the course of the story, Richard develops from an oblivious young boy to a responsible young adult.

In Richard Wright’s autobiography entitled “Black Boy,” Wright told the world about his life. I feel that Wright intended this book not to make readers feel sorry for how African Americans lived in the past, but to inform us of how life was during that period of time.

What would one expect to become of a boy who is overwhelmed by manipulation, segregation, and discrimination throughout his life? It is such a boy--growing up in the South during the height of Jim Crow Laws--who Richard portrays himself to be in his autobiography, Black Boy. An analysis of Richard Wight reveals that through his actions, and often despite the consequences, Richard usually demonstrates a strong will to be an individual or do things his own way rather than comply with society. Before all else, Richard’s childhood exhibits his strong will despite the harsh pressures of his family. Most of his family members believe in a rigid and dictatorial standard, and often try to make Richard abide by this standard also.

Some people live in a dark world where the sun hides behind the clouds and the day goes by very slowly because emptiness, sadness, and nonacceptance are feelings that overpower them when feeling alone or out of place. Richard, the main character of a well-known memoir titled Black Boy by Richard Wright himself is mainly about him going through many emotions because of the lack of belonging. This book is about the obstacles a black Southern boy has to go through in the rough environment he lives in and because of the color on his skin. In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard struggles with fitting in his environment but ultimately realizes that by expressing himself through writing he can belong. As a child, Richard faces a lack of connection

Throughout “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,” Richard Wright explores the “lessons” that black Americans had to learn in order to survive in a violently racist society. The short story includes nine experiences that the author; Richard Wright, has learned or survived through. One of the first “lessons” learned is from the white boys who lived on the other side of the tracks. While retreating from what seemed like a “war”, according to Wright, in which case, was a fictional fight (play fight).

   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.

In the racist South, African Americans constantly lived in fear under the oppressive rule of the white Southerner. Richard Wright, an African American from the South writes about his experiences with racism. His memoir reveals the pain and danger African Americans faced on a daily basis. In Black Boy, Wright reveals the economic effects of racism on African Americans in the United States of America.

The novel “The Catcher in The Rye” is told in from a first-person limited omniscient, as we learn of all the characters only through Holden’s descriptions. The style is relatively informal and colloquial, using various slang terms and using some profane language. A central theme of the novel is Holden’s aversion to the maturation process and his desire to prevent children from being exposed to the horrors of adulthood.

As a young, black, boy growing up in the Jim Crow South, Richard Wright is expected to act like any typical black-accept the whites as his superiors, learn how to work for the whites instead of receiving a proper education, and put his faith in God that things will turn out alright. In another world, characters in the Interpreter of Maladies, such as, Boori Ma, Bibi Haldar, and other disrespected people are disregarded and ostracized because of their differences from their families and overall community. The society Richard Wright writes about in his autobiography, Black Boy, and the plethora of societies Jhumpa Lahiri portrays in her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, demonstrate how certain figures are alienated for not following the same ways of life they are expected to adhere to, overall, revealing their society’s assumptions and moral values.

He was made to deal with this horror in one of two ways, either to keep his head down and comply with the unfair treatment he received, or to fight back, and rebel against the society’s intentions for him. He accepted an array of abuse, ranging from humiliation to the threat of physical violence, and although it took its toll Wright kept quiet. However, in any area of his life where he could get away with it, Wright subverted the authoritative rule, with theft, disobedience, or the pursuit of forbidden education, in order to combat brutality he faced. Cleary, Black Boy tells us important lessons about the American past, in terms of racism, and how its remnants continue today. But, equally importantly, it helps understand the role an individual in society can play in bringing about change.

The racial tension that existed in the twentieth century had a social impact on blacks and whites alike. The blacks were forced into a life of oppression and bleak poverty that strangled any efforts to rise above their social standing. The whites were forced into a lifestyle of bigotry and prejudice to maintain the status quo and to keep the black populace in their place. It was an extraordinary pressure for both races fraught with the pressure of always having to remember one’s place in society. The authors of the two historiographies demonstrate the conscious effort it took to preserve the segregation of the south. On the one hand, Richard Wright, the black child, soon learned that he had to always act as a subservient and never show that he was a human with hopes and aspirations for a different future, by always suppressing ego and machismo. Whereas on the other, Melton McLaurin showed how he always had to act the gentleman and have the upper hand in front of his black, inferior friends. The trauma experienced by both races, although different in nature, proved to be a burden for both.

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.