Religion In Richard Wright's Black Boy

From emotionally captivating sermons to the harrows of a Christian school, Richard Wright’s childhood consisted greatly of the Christian church; despite this, Richard never became an authentically pious individual. In Wright’s Black Boy, an autobiographical bildungsroman which follows the renowned author from childhood to adolescence, religion isn’t as central to the story as the motifs of Southern racial relations or poverty per sé. Richard’s main reactions with religion occur in his late childhood and early teen years with his Grandmother’s conservative and limiting views, his forced baptism in the Methodist church, and his horrid Christian schooling with his aunt, so it’s no wonder that he never fully committed. However, the absolutes upheld

Southern society promoted a more sinister version of this hierarchy which deems the older, whiter, and more pious worthy of the most power. Richard, an impudent young boy in need of religious convincing, has the least amount of power according to a combination of the two ideals. Richard reflects on this in the midst of his most intense qualms with religion: “Wherever I found religion in my life, I found strife, the attempt of one individual or group to rule another in the name of God. The naked will to power seemed always to walk in the wake of a hymn” (136). Numerous times throughout the story, his family tries to mollify Richard’s impudence towards obedience and make him thoroughly Christian by either using their own power to enforce their argument or by putting him into a position of powerlessness. His mother forces him to be baptized to maintain public pride; Granny tries to use Richard’s peers to persuade him to commit to the church; Addie tries to reassert her dominance over Richard and therefore his irreligiousness in the schoolhouse; and Tom beats him in an effort to break his spirit. Richard’s powerlessness emerges most lucidly when he is in a religious predicament or being punished, and these two events often occur simultaneously. When Addie beats him for lying during the walnut incident, he said, “I felt the equal of an adult [because] I knew that I had been beaten for a reason that was not right” (107). In this instance, he stands up for himself and realizes, for the first time, that there is no correlation between age and wisdom. In seeing himself as an adult, he recognizes that he sees his ethical opinion matters as much, if not more so, than his Aunt’s. Richard sees beyond the absolutes of childhood innocence and age-equivalent power, both evident the Christian church, as they render him increasingly silent and