Black Boy by Richard Wright Essay

   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.

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.

In his autobiographical work, Black Boy, Richard Wright wrote about his battles with hunger, abuse, and racism in the south during the early 1900's. Wright was a gifted author with a passion for writing that refused to be squelched, even when he was a young boy. To convey his attitude toward the importance of language as a key to identity and social acceptance, Wright used rhetorical techniques such as rhetorical appeals and diction.

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.

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.

"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

Richard Wright is an African American writer who grow up during the 1900s to 1920s when Jim Crow laws and racial segregation were rampaging through the entire South. Wright had faced and witnessed many unjust, cruel incidents and scenes throughout his youth, for instance: frequent violence against black people in which the police didn’t care; getting disparaged by white comrades; being attacked by hunger because the white offered them a tiny amount of food. However, Wright learned the way to survive by putting down his dignity and pride when dealing with white people, and being humble and submissive. Today, in this post-racialism society, racist incidents happen far less than before. Nonetheless, there are still some major obstacles hindering

   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.

Richard Wright’s autobiography book “Black boy” took place in the southern parts of America during the depression. As the protagonist is played as himself, he portrays the harsh living moments he and his family faced. Throughout the story his father abandons his family, leaving Richard and his brother fatherless and leaving Richard’s mother with financial matters, forcing herself to place Richard and his brother to an orphanage. As he grows up, life gets even harder as he faces complication with his family and complications with racism. Apart from issues, Richard has always found his studies meaningful, in particularly writing is what gets him mild, writing is what expanded his future, and writing is what kept him going. Richard novel focuses

The Novel, “Black boy” focuses on the struggle for a talented black boy in the south. The author writes about a young black boy growing up as an African American in the Jim Crow era, characterizing economic and social hardships that were typical for African Americans in the south. The main character, “Richard,” suffers more than the average black southern guy due to his family circumstances and his strong willed personality. He uses free writing to release himself from racial prejudice he faces daily. Richard faces extreme hardship due to his family not being able to provide simple things such as love, acceptance, and security. When Richard was young, he was playing with fire by the curtains and ended up burning his houses down. Nathan, Richard’s father, ends up leaving the family as the main provider for another family. Richard and Ella, Richard’s mom, became dirt poor, which lead to them starving some nights. Due to his mother working excessive hours, Richard became an alcoholic at age 6. His mom eventually became sick and couldn’t work or provide for Richard and his little brother. Ella moves to Arkansas with her well off sister, Maggie, whose husband runs a popular saloon. Richard appreciates the limitless food until jealous white men kill Maggie’s husband, which leads to Richard, Ella and Maggie fleeing Arkansas. Maggie eventually fell in love again and left Ella and Richard alone all again. Ella gets terribly sick and moves in with Richard’s grandmother. Richard

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.

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.