black boy
...l problems in the isolated world of the Old South to problems in a more worldly setting. Black Boy The emotions of a black boy are vividly displayed in Richard Wright’s narrative autobiography, Black Boy. The title puts the story in simple perspective: a boy, not yet a man, going up black. It is his story of finding his identity, the rite of passage to truly be a man. To pass this rite he must overcome the oppression of his own culture and the white culture, poverty of rural Black America and the Great Depression and societal oppression from his comrades in the communist party. Life begins barely a generation from slavery. Wright begins his story as the little arsonist burning down his granny’s house; he is of the tender age of four. This is the start of his nomadic life in the delta region in the old south. At the beginning of these moves from town to town, his father leaves him, his mother and brother to fend for themselves. They try to make a life on their own, but due a paralytic stroke of Richards’s mother, Ella, they are forced to move in with relatives. They are constantly faced with physical hunger. They share housing with his Aunt Maggie, but mainly with his grandmother and grandfather, Granny and Grandpa. During his stay with his Granny, he faces his major antagonists, Granny and his Aunt Addie, over the issues of conforming to their strict religious life style. He also has to overcome the challenges of the other black boys in his neighborhood and the school yard for his right to be there. Through all this and the beatings administered from his family, his finds his love for the written word. After fighting for his right to prepare and give his valedictorian speech, he moves to seek his own world in the city of Memphis, only to find a new oppression, racism. He is confronted on the streets and at his place of work. He is told in not so friendly terms that there are areas that a black boy is not to be in or he will be harmed. He is forced from his place of employment, because he is a threat to the white men’s place in the labor market. They (white men) degrade him even further by forcing him into a bloody fight with another black man from a rival company for the sporting pleasure of the owners of the companies. Worst yet, he must shed his dignity to survive by acting like the obedient, good old black boy: smile, laugh, cast his eyes down, not to look at white women and stay out of their way. Stories of life in the north prompt him to move and eventually take his mother and Aunt Maggie with him. Wright finds Chicago alien and different, but in ways the same. He is shocked that he is able to sit on the bus and is ignored by the whites around him. While at work a white woman actually brushes up against him and speaks to him as a person. Hunger is still at his doorstep, this time it is from the Great Depression, not from the poverty of the Delta, but, like in the south, he is black which means less opportunity for work. While in Chicago he becomes enthralled with the communist party. He finds an ideology that accepts the black man as an equal, but it is an ideology. He is treated as an accepted equal, but later is pressured to conform to their rigid ideals. Through this last trial of his hunger to seek freedom from oppression, he discovers himself and his need to express himself through the written word. Hunger and oppression gnawed at and confined Richard Wright throughout his story. It was the hunger of his body and his mind. It is the oppression that confined his spirit and tried to break him, to conform him other people ideas of humanity. He experienced these within his family, within his peers and outside of his world. Hunger was real and persistent. Whether it was in the Delta, Memphis or Chicago, food was rarely plentiful. Poverty was a way of life in the Delta. His father left the family to fend for itself. His mother became ill and later had a stroke, leaving them without any income. While in Memphis, he was not able to hold a steady job, due to the racism and his lack of willingness to conform. In Chicago he had suffer through the great depression when jobs were rare or non-existent, especially for a black man. Wright also used hunger as a metaphor for his desire to be...