Suffering: Black Boy By Richard Wright

Suffering affects how people act, and it changes their outlooks on life. Suffering influences Richard right in his memoir Black Boy. Wright is an African American boy in the Jim Crow South. His family is poor and faces many hardships, such as his father abandoning them. Richard — and most African Americans of the time — face racial prejudice. The book details his youth, in which his family has no permanent home and often cannot afford meals. Hence, Wright suffers from a lack of basic necessities, affection and attention, and equal treatment. Throughout the memoir, Richard suffers from not having enough food, and does not have a suitable home. Wright’s family is impecunious, especially after his father, the only source of income, leaves. Throughout

Wright’s earliest memories of his father are of him being a moody beer-bellied drunk. Richard never has a loving relationship with his father; in fact, they barely had any relationship. Wright recounts him as “always a stranger… always somehow alien and remote” (1.10). Richard never feels love or affection from his father, who to him seems like an alien in his own house. Richard’s father spends most of the day sleeping, so Richard spends little time with him. But again, any time they spend together involves either yelling or beating. Matters get worse when his father abandoned the family, leaving Richard in an uncomfortable situation with no father and an uncertain future. Aside from not having a loving father, Wright deals with often abusive relatives. His Granny and Aunt Addie beat him, and his grandfather threatens to shoot him. His mother, who does all she can to raise Richard and his brother alone, still beats him occasionally. But worse, she often becomes ill, including becoming paralyzed after a stroke, leading to Richard relying on distant family and himself much more than an 11-year-old boy should. Before the stroke, as mentioned earlier, Richard moves into an orphanage because his mother cannot afford to raise him. Their, Wright receives little parental love, which is reduced more when his mother is no longer allowed to visit him. Eventually, Richard realizes he has nobody to love. At this point, he is “rapidly learning to distrust everything and everybody” (Wright 1.29). He is losing his family, and is turning into an introvert who has no one that loves him. Clearly, Wright suffers from not having strong family and not getting the affection a family should