Richard Wright’s novel, Black Boy Essay

“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.

In the rural south Richard Wright is experiencing racism and witnessing violence because of race. In the 1920’s, race was a major factor in the way you grew up and how you were treated. As an African American boy he would be denied certain rights which caused him to become angry, among other things. When Richard gets mad or feels threatened he displays behavior that is seen as unacceptable. He is constantly being exposed to racism and violence so much that he is becoming influenced to display that behavior with people around him.

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.

When Richard finally learned to read and count, he got even more curious. He would ask questions about everything, and that is how he learned about the differences between whites and blacks. He heard about white people, but he never pondered about the meaning. He saw them so many times that is was normal. To Richard they were people like everybody else and lived life like everybody did. When he asked about the different names of people he never got a clear answer to his question. This caused Richard to stare at the white people and try to make sense of the differences. This was one of the first steps of the loss of innocence in Richard’s life. A moment of realization. (122 words)

In the excerpt from "Black Boy", Wright utilizes dialogue in order to establish Wright's first full recognition of his identity as a “colored boy.” While Richard and his family are traveling via train to Arkansas, he begins to notice the separation of blacks and whites. This acknowledgement sparks questions about his grandmother, who is a white woman. Richard is faced with the conflict “Man vs. Society.” He is struggling to understand the separation among blacks and whites because his grandmother has lived in the same home with them.

At first Richard is young and doesn’t understand why people with their color skin tone are treated different and why white people seem to be more superior in terms of power and authority. Questioning the violence that happens around him and the racist quotes on newspaper, Richard learns the position that African Americans are in, and the fear that many of his race carries everyday. “But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target”(Chapter , pg ). This quote really tells the reason for the struggle that African Americans face, which is based merely on their skin tone. During Richard’s time many racist whites take their authority and power to the limit, beating Blacks, young and old, and even killing them. These white people who don’t have any regard for the human life of all people are shown in many of Richard’s jobs. One of which, Richard decides to leave because he could not take the racist remarks and attitudes of the white individuals.“It was not until I had left the delicatessen job that I saw how grossly I had misread the motives and attitudes of Mr. Hoffman and his wife. I had not yet learned anything that would have helped me to thread my way through these perplexing racial relations.” (2.15.33). Richard is still learning how to deal with these situations, as he would need this

Years after African Americans were stripped of their identities and sense of worth when they were brought here as slaves, the Jim Crow laws continued to curtail their rights and freedoms. Racism and violence were the tools permitting whites to produce a social order characterizing inequality. Richard Wright explores this within his memoir Black Boy, in the opening scene by depicting the events and aftermath of Richard setting his family home ablaze; Wright is able to set the stage for a tale of struggle with authority, fear, and perseverance as an African American growing up in the south at the height of the Jim Crow Laws.

Black Boy is an autobiography written by Richard Wright from the age of four to his early twenties. Right from the beginning of the novel, Wright faces violence both mentally and physically. Violence is a theme that reoccurs throughout the novel frequently. To further understand why Wright acted violent and why he used violence so many times in the novel, three biographies were used. The biographies used as a lens to explore the meaning and importance of Black Boy were The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain by Langston Hughes, The Enduring Importance of Richard Wright by Milton Moskowitz, and Richard Wright Biography from Biography.

Black Boy by Richard Wright is a well written novel that talks about him growing up in the Jim Crow south. By the title you know he is African American and living in the Jim crow south he soon found out that white folks were about to do more and were better than blacks. The two races were not equal and blacks were often discriminated, hated, and punished for the most simple things. Many were punished for simple things such as looking the wrong way at a white women, things that in todays society would be completely acceptable. Richard did not know why things were how they were in life, but he soon figured out. A huge theme for this book is hunger, the actual physical aspect of it and metaphorically he was hungry.

Conflict is an unfortunate part of everyday life and they vary from person to person. Some involve people that we know, some involve complete strangers. Some conflicts are in a person’s control and are caused by them, and some are at the mercy of their circumstances. In the autobiography “ Black Boy” by Richard Wright, Richard gives the reader insight into his personal life and the different conflicts in them. He shows the reader not only conflicts between him and family members, but also between him and conflicts with strangers and how he reacts in both, especially in the first six chapters of the autobiography. In chapters 1-6 of Black Boy, Richard faces conflicts with family members and members of his community. To maintain a sense of self

His family’s confidence never dwindled; time after time, they joined a crusade to save Richard’s soul. Tensions began to increase when Aunt Addie enrolled Richard in the religious school where she taught. Labeled as a black sheep, Richard continued to defy the iron fist of his family. The conflict between Aunt Addie and Richard exploded when he was accused of eating walnuts in class. Richard knew the boy in front of him was guilty, but he abided by the “street code” and said nothing. Despite Richard’s denial, Aunt Addie did not conduct an investigation and immediately beat Richard in front of the class. After submitting to his aunt, he finally confessed the guilty suspect. Rather than to commend Richard for the truth, Aunt Addie attempted to beat him again after school. However, brandishing a knife, Richard defended himself. He had stood up for his dignity and pride, something that was worth more to him than anything.

Richard experiences a troublesome encounter with his family’s preacher Richard said ‘That preacher’s going to eat all of the chicken!” Richard not given many chances to eat is upset, that he is not given a chance to eat and is thought to be joking about the matter when is he is very serious. Richard enjoying himself while being read a book is interrupted by his grandmother that says “I want none of that Devil stuff in my house.” Richard now associated that experience of why he didn’t like their religion. Richard is forced to go to a school for the Seventh Day Adventist and not wanting to go Richard is accused of eating in class when he was not Aunt Addie thinking that Richard is lying says “This not just a school, but God’s holy ground.”

“What is a rebel? A man who says no.” (Albert Camus, The Rebel) Black Boy is more than a mere autobiography, dealing with a man during the time of Jim Crow laws. Indeed, though the book is generally advertised as such, the greater theme here is not of the black man versus the white; it is of Richard’s fight against adversity, and the prevalent and constraining attitudes of not just his time, or the “White South”, but of the attitude of conformity throughout all time. Richard develops from birth to become a nonconformist; a rebel, and we can see this attitude throughout his whole life. As a child, he refuses to simply follow orders if they make no sense to him; for this, he is lashed repeatedly. As he grows older, he begins

“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason”(Abraham Joshua Heschel). This relates to Richard Wright’s autobiography, “Black Boy”. Richard Wright depicts his extremely difficult life as a black man in the heat of the south’s racism and oppression. Unlike most of the blacks Richard meets throughout his life, he is extraordinarily freethinking and open minded for his social class. Richard prefers to question the norms of society rather than fit in and take the verbal and physical abuse from whites and sometimes blacks. From a very young age Richard is confused and does not understand the concept of racism. Richard Wright learns at a very young age that if he is to survive, he must do so independently.

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.