blackboy sparknotes
...ces him to wash all the windows while the neighbors look on with pity and amusement. Ella invites the preacher from the local black church over for a dinner of fried chicken. Richard is very excited about the relatively fancy meal, but Ella will not let Richard eat any of the chicken until he finishes his soup, which he is unable to do in his excitement for the meat. Increasingly distressed as he watches the preacher devour piece after piece of the precious chicken, Richard eventually runs out of the room, screaming that the preacher is going to eat everything. The preacher laughs, but Ella does not find Richard’s dramatic actions amusing, and forbids him any more dinner. Ella sues Nathan for child support, but Nathan successfully convinces the judge that he is already giving all the support he can. Richard notes that he does not hate his father but merely prefers not to see him or think of him at all. For this reason, Richard refuses his mother’s requests that he go to his father’s job and beg him for money. Poverty forces Ella to place Richard and his brother in an orphanage for a month, where they eat two miserable meals per day and tend the lawn, pulling grass by hand. The orphanage director, Miss Simon, apparently takes a liking to Richard and asks him to help her blot envelopes in her office. Once in Miss Simon’s office, however, Richard is paralyzed with an inexplicable fear and is unable to do anything she asks of him. Frustrated, Miss Simon drives Richard from her office. He decides to run away from the orphanage that night, and when he does so he gets lost. Richard encounters a white policeman, but he remembers the story of the white man beating the black boy and fears that the policeman will beat him. The policeman is friendly, however, and brings Richard back to the orphanage. Miss Simon promptly lashes Richard for running away. Ella decides that the family should go to her sister Maggie’s home in Elaine, Arkansas. She takes Richard out of the orphanage so that he can go to Nathan and plead for the money the family needs to make the journey. Predictably, Nathan claims that he has no money to give, and he seems amused by the idea that his children are going hungry. A slight altercation ensues, and Richard and his mother say harsh words to the irritatingly jolly Nathan and his mistress. Nathan then offers Richard a nickel, and though the boy wants to accept it, he refuses. Richard muses that this meeting is the last time he would see his father for twenty-five years. When he next sees Nathan, the old man is nothing more than a poor, toothless sharecropper. Richard feels nothing but pity for Nathan as an old man, reflecting that whereas Nathan failed in his attempt to find a successful life in the city, Richard himself has done much better, and created a dramatically new life out of his humble origins. Part I: Chapter 2 When Ella finally retrieves her children from the orphanage, Richard is so excited to leave that he only says goodbye to the other children because his mother demands it. In a brief digression from the story, Richard, as author, argues against the popular contention that black people lead particularly passionate, emotional lives. Rather, he believes that what others interpret as emotional depth in black people is really just frenzy and confusion occasioned by living as outsiders in America. On the way to Elaine, Arkansas, where Ella’s sister Maggie lives, Ella and her sons spend some time with Granny in Jackson, Mississippi. Granny is renting a room to a young schoolteacher, also named Ella. One day, Richard discovers the schoolteacher reading a book and implores her to tell him what the book is about. Hesitantly, Ella begins to describe the novel, Bluebeard and His Seven Wives. Richard is utterly enthralled by the fantasy world of the story, but Granny interrupts the reading before Ella can finish. A strict Seventh-Day Adventist, Granny equates fiction with lies and sin, so she forbids such “Devil stuff” in her house. When Richard protests against his grandmother’s restrictions, she slaps him and declares that he will burn in hell. Richard, however, is so enraptured by Ella’s story that he becomes determined to read as many novels as he can, risk or no risk. He secretly borrows Ella’s novels from her room and tries to read them, but cannot quite make sense of them because his vocabulary is too limited. When Richard’s mother falls ill, Granny assumes the task of bathing him and his brother. One particular night, while Granny is scrubbing his backside, Richard absentmindedly and uncomprehendingly tells her that when she is done she can kiss him “back there.” Convinced that Richard is a mouthpiece for the Devil, Granny becomes enraged and begins beating him with a wet towel. Richard flees. Upon learning of Richard’s statement, his mother joins in the pursuit to punish him. Richard then crawls under a bed, where not even his grandfather can reach him. The boy remains there until hunger and thirst drive him out, at which point his mother beats him with a switch. To his mother’s frustration, Richard is honestly unable to tell her where he learned the phrase he said. He is not even sure what the phrase means or why it constitutes such a grave insult. Granny, convinced that Richard has learned the phrase from Ella and her books, confronts the young schoolteacher, who decides to pack her things and move out. Journeying to Aunt Maggie’s in Arkansas, Richard notices separate sections on the train for white and black travelers. Out of naïve curiosity, Richard wants to go look at the white section, but his mother refuses and grows annoyed. He questions his mother about Granny’s ancestry and race, which only annoys Ella further. Richard himself is annoyed that nobody will talk to him about race relations and resolves to learn whatever he can about this tricky issue. Arriving in Arkansas, Richard discovers that Aunt Maggie and her husband, Hoskins, always have enough food, as Hoskins earns a good living from his profitable saloon. Nevertheless, Richard is so used to hunger that he hoards food all over the house, constantly fearing that the food will somehow run out. On a trip to a nearby town, Hoskins pulls a prank on Richard by jokingly driving the buggy into the Mississippi River. Though Hoskins knows the river is very shallow and safe, Richard is wildly fearful that they will be swept away and drowned. Unfortunately, Hoskins’s joke makes Richard unable to trust his uncle. One night soon thereafter, local whites murder Hoskins because they covet his profitable business. Unable to claim Hoskins’s body or his assets—and in danger of being murdered themselves—Ella, her two boys, and Maggie flee back to Granny’s house. One day, while playing at Granny’s house, Richard sees a regiment of black soldiers training for World War I and, later, a black chain gang working by the roadside guarded by armed white men. In confusion, Richard thinks that the chain gang is a group of elephants, later realizing that the inmates’ striped uniforms had reminded of him of zebras, which he had then confused with elephants. These sights cause Richard to once again ponder the -mysterious division of power between white and black people. Ella quickly tires of Granny’s strict religious routine, so she, the two boys, and Aunt Maggie move out, resettling in West Helena, Arkansas. While Maggie and Ella work, Richard and his brother entertain themselves by playing with other children and taunting the Jewish proprietor of the corner grocery store. Richard learns that his landlady runs a curious business and resolves to learn more about it. He peeps over the door dividing his apartment from the neighboring one and sees a man and a woman having sex. Startled, Richard falls from his perch, causing the landlady to come over and scold him for scaring away her customers. The landlady then evicts Richard’s family because his mother refuses to beat him as punishment for his nosiness. Meanwhile, Maggie begins seeing an elegant man known only as Professor Matthews. Professor Matthews is hiding from the police, so he comes to see Maggie only at night and gives Richard and his brother gifts to ensure their silence. Among these gifts is a little female poodle that Richard names Betsy. After Professor Matthew commits a mysterious crime that seems to involve the death of a white woman, he and Maggie hurriedly flee to the North. Richard is sad to see them go because Maggie is his favorite aunt. Without Maggie’s income, the family once again falls into hard times. One day, Richard is so hungry that he resolves to sell Betsy for a dollar. He goes door-to-door in the white neighborhood and finds a white woman willing to buy the dog. Richard’s mounting fear and hatred of white people, however, make him run home when the woman says that she has only ninety-seven cents on hand to pay for the dog. One week later, a coal wagon hits Betsy and kills her. Richard buries her mournfully, while Ella coldly reminds him that he should have sold Betsy when he had the chance, because a dead dog is useless. As World War I draws to an end, racial tensions in the South rise. In hopeless confusion and fear, Richard listens to his neighbors’ stories of violent racial conflict. A tale of a black woman’s vengeance upon the white mob that killed her husband particularly impresses Richard, and he resolves to do something similar if he ever faces an angry mob. Richard begins attending school again but suffers the same paralyzing shyness. One day, the war’s end is suddenly announced, and the schoolteacher dismisses class early. Running outside, Richard sees a plane flying in the sky. It is the first time he has ever seen a plane, and he thinks it is a bird, refusing to believe the crowd’s assertions that it is man-made. For Christmas that year, Richard receives only an orange. Summary: Chapter 3 “[T]he meaning of living came only when on...