The Themes Of Racism In Richard Wright's Black Boy

934 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Analysis of Black Boy by Richard Wright

Black Boy is an autobiography of Richard Wright 's life from his childhood growing up in the south, to him leaving the communist party. Wright writes this novel for several meaningful purposes. He demonstrates to the reader the struggle of being a black person in the south after the Civil War. Even though a numerous amount of people have obtained information about racism in the south, he displays a handful of personal situations that go more into depth about racism. He writes this novel to illustrate all the events he copes with throughout his life that demonstrates a better understanding of who this author is as a person. Richard Wright 's struggles in his childhood transpire him into the unique and memorable author he will always be remembered as. Despite Black Boy being recognized as a controversial piece of work when it was published, the significance of Wright 's experiences in the south are relevant to modern society. Richard Wright incorporates several important themes in Black Boy. One of the themes is the dangerous effects of racism. Wright displays a new interpretation of racism as he applies it to society as a whole, rather than Richard Wright expresses throughout the novel his desire to join society, but on his terms. He doesn 't want to conform to society. One event is when his grandmother allows Wright and his family to come stay with her in Jackson, Mississippi. Despite his grandmother being incredibly religious and attempting to reform him, he will not give in. His family firmly disagrees with his passion for writing. However, Wright contains his own views on life and discourages the thought of being another black person who makes little to no money. An additional event occurs when Wright becomes the Valedictorian and his principal tells him to read a certain speech or he will not graduate. Despite these threats, Wright makes his own

Show More
Related

  • Use of Rhetorical Strategies in Richard Wright’s Autobiography, Black Boy

    468 Words  | 1 Pages

    Richard Wright grew up in a bitterly racist America. In his autobiography Black Boy, he reveals his personal experience with the potency of language. Wright delineates the efficacious role language plays in forming one’s identity and social acceptance through an ingenious use of various rhetorical strategies.

    Read More

  • Suffering and Struggle in Sonny´s Blues by James Baldwin

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.

    Read More

  • Black Boy And Separate Pasts Analysis

    1690 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Black Boy blacks were treated as less than humans. The whites wanted to be superior in every way and they forced the blacks to follow their rules. In one of the jobs that he had, Wright witnesses how awful his boss treated a customer because she did not pay. “They got out and half dragged and half kicked the woman into the store…later the woman stumbled out, bleeding, crying, holding her stomach her clothing torn.” (Wright, 179) Whites treating blacks like this was normal. When the woman was being mistreated there were whites around, but they did not even look at them because they did not care. There was also a policeman who arrested the woman after she was assaulted Wright was mistreated in many ways because he was black and did not know how to give in to the rules. Because of the way society treated him, Wright became angry and with that anger grew a motivation to become better. He wanted to change the destiny that the whites had set for all blacks. In Separate Pasts McLaurin grew up in the South with blacks around him since he was a child. While there was still segregation in his city, blacks and whites still lived together better than with Wright. McLaurin recalls how he spent so much time with blacks and to him it was normal. “From the fall I entered the seventh grade until I left for college…every working day I talked and

    Read More

  • Prejudice Explored in "Black Boy" by Richard Wright

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    In a country full of inequities and discrimination, numerous books were written to depict our unjust societies. One of the many books is an autobiography by Richard Wright. In Black Boy, Wright shares these many life-changing experiences he faced, which include the discovery of racism at a young age, the fights he put up against discrimination and hunger, and finally his decision to move Northward to a purported better society. Through these experiences, which eventually led him to success, Wright tells his readers the cause and effect of racism, and hunger. In a way, the novel The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle illustrates similar experiences.

    Read More

  • How Did African Americans Influence Richard Wright

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.” (Richard Wright) In 1945 an intelligent black boy named Richard Wright made the brave decision to write and publish an autobiography illustrating the struggles, trials, and tribulations of being a Negro in the Jim Crow South. Ever since Wright wrote about his life in Black Boy many African American writers have been influenced by Wright to do the same. Wright found the motivation and inspiration to write Black Boy through the relationships he had with his family and friends, the influence of folk art and famous authors of the early 1900s, and mistreatment of blacks in the South and uncomfortable racial barriers.

    Read More

  • Theme Of Hunger In Richard Wright's Black Boy

    549 Words  | 2 Pages

    First, Wright’s prevalent hunger is for knowledge. This hunger sets him apart from those around him, which drives the path created by their differences further between them. Nevertheless, it gives Wright’s life significance and direction.

    Read More

  • Racism in Black Boy, Black Caesar and Malcolm X

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    In all three stories, Black Boy, Black Caesar and Malcolm X, there are black male characters who experience growing up in racist societies, and who witness the importance of their extended families. Richard, Tommy and Malcolm respectively, become the men they were through these childhood experiences and these experiences mold them into becoming who they were as adults. Although each of these men experienced both racism and the importance of extended family and the black community, they all turned out to be somewhat different.

    Read More

  • Richard Wright

    1434 Words  | 3 Pages

    Richard Wright "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 to 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 Wright is the father of the modern American black novel.

    Read More

  • Use of Diction and Imagery in Richard Wright’s Black Boy

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    Black Boy, which was written by Richard Wright, is an autobiography of his upbringing and of all of the trouble he encountered while growing up. Black Boy is full of drama that will sometimes make the reader laugh and other times make the reader cry. Black Boy is most known for its appeals to emotions, which will keep the reader on the edge of his/her seat. In Black Boy Richard talks about his social acceptance and identity and how it affected him. In Black Boy, Richard’s diction showed his social acceptance and his imagery showed his identity.

    Read More

  • Richard Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home

    2258 Words  | 5 Pages

    Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home” confronts a young black person’s forced maturation at the hands of unsympathetic whites. Through his almost at times first person descriptions, Wright makes Big Boy a hero to us. Big Boy hovers between boyhood and adulthood throughout the story, and his innocence is lost just in time for him to survive. Singled out for being larger than his friends, he is the last to stand, withstanding bouts with white men, a snake, and a dog, as we are forced to confront the different levels of nature and its inherent violence.

    Read More

  • Refutation: The Story of Bigger Thomas ( Native Son )

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Darryl Pinckney’s discerning critical essay, “Richard Wright: The Unnatural History of a Native Son,” Pinckney states that all of Wright’s books contain the themes of violence, inhumanity, rage, and fear. Wright writes about these themes because he expresses, in his books, his convictions about his own struggles with racial oppression, the “brutal realities of his early life.” Pinckney claims that Wright’s works are unique for Wright’s works did not attempt to incite whites to acknowledge blacks. Wright does not write to preach that blacks are equal to whites. The characters in Wright’s works, including Bigger Thomas from Native Son, are not all pure in heart; the characters have psychological burdens and act upon their burdens. For instance, Bigger Thomas, long under racial oppression, accidentally suffocates Mary Dalton in her room for fear that he will be discriminated against and charged with the rape of Mary Dalton. Also, according to Pinckney, although the characters of Wright’s books are under these psychological burdens, they always have “futile hopes [and] desires.” At the end of Native Son, Bigger is enlightened by the way his lawyer Max treats him, with the respect of a human being. Bigger then desires nothing but to live, but he has been sentenced to death.

    Read More

  • Hunger In Richard Wright's Black Boy

    631 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a child, Wright contends with hunger. Before he reached elementary school, his father abandoned him, his mother and brother, leaving them penniless. His mother could never pay for much food, causing him and his family to starve. Richard is thirsty for new knowledge, wanting to expand his brain. Growing up as black during the 1920s gives Richard limited opportunities to get a strong, secure education, so he is always looking for new ways to obtain knowledge.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast Black Like Me and Black Boy

    1592 Words  | 4 Pages

    The racism and discrimination against blacks in both Black Like Me and Black Boy show the hardships and racial injustice that blacks face in the south with their share of differences and similarities. After reading Black Like Me and Black Boy, I have gained a better perspective, about how in Black Like Me when John Howard Griffin was a “black” man he was treated unequally as all blacks are and once he went back to being a white man those people who had treated him bad were now treating him with respect. However, in the end, no matter the skin color, some things are the same for both colors. In Black Boy, I have learned that the life of a young child, a black boy, is hard during the segregated south and can harshly affect the child while growing up. As I read, I came across some similarities between both works, as well as some differences.

    Read More

  • Bigger Thomas as America’s Native Son

    1231 Words  | 3 Pages

    The novel is loaded with a plethora of imageries of a hostile white world. Wright shows how white racism affects the behavior, feelings, and thoughts of Bigger.

    Read More

  • Black Boy-Oppression

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    Growing up as a Negro in the South in the early 1900's is not that easy, some people suffer different forms of oppression. In this case, it happens in the autobiography called Black Boy written by Richard Wright. The novel is set in the early part of the 1900's, somewhere in Deep South. Richard Wright, who is the main character, is also the protagonist. The antagonist is no one person specifically, it takes many different forms called "oppression" in general. The main character over comes this "oppression" by rebelling against the common roles of the black, society.

    Read More

More about The Themes Of Racism In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Open Document