The Meaning Of The Poem In Richard Wright's Black Boy

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Recommended: Racism in literature

There is a major significance in the title of the book: Black Boy. The word “boy” has a racist meaning behind it. Southern whites used the word “boy” to imply that black men will never grow into real black men. So I think the title is symbolic in a major way. I also think he uses the title “Black Boy” to show the things he went through as a young black boy, not only the things he went through, but what many black boys went through. How throughout the novel you notice Richard being addressed as boy and not by his name. So the title can mean various things, from racist things to the things he went through as a young boy. I believe that Richard Wright did this on purpose, not to confuse the reader but to make the reader have questions about why he named the novel this. I believe he also uses the title to show how he matured out of just a Black Boy, but into a young man. How Richard educated himself and became independent as his father walked out of his life, which is something various young boys’ fathers did. He makes the title very significant. To show that the word boy means more than what it really is, that the word boy means black.

The setting of the book first takes place in the woods of Mississippi. Until Richard burns the house down and the family of four moves to Memphis where everything changes. The time period is roughly 1912-1937, were racism was a really major thing. The genre is Bildungsroman (coming of age novel); modernist novel; existential novel. Living in Memphis where Richard had to fight to get his respect from young men. Couldn’t walk down the street to the store without being beat up and being robbed of the money had. Where at the age of six he was a drunkard. Where he had var...

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...t side of the main character.

“Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up a night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly.” {Black Boy, 1944; New York, Pg.14} This quote just grabbed my attention so much, and basically summed up and embodied the whole story at once. In this quote Richard Wright makes hunger seem as if it is a real person that is haunting him. Which is basically what it is, because hunger taught Richard throughout the whole story, because all the things he went through went back to hunger. Not only hunger just from food, but hunger for more and his family, hunger to have his father in his life, hunger to learn more. How Richard doesn’t want to settle for less, and it bother him every night.

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