Segregation Exposed In Richard Wright's Black Boy

This can be seen in the first few paragraphs of the book in the house of Wright’s grandmother in Mississippi. His grandmother is sick, and Wright has been warned several times by his mother to keep quiet; however, his rebellious personality is immediately revealed in the dramatic gesture of setting the house on fire. I believe that Wright’s insubordinate temperament will lead to him breaking the law later in the novel. Subsequent Reaction: According to the novel my prediction was validated as Wright starts to bootleg liquor in a hotel.

The first half of the book is set in the rural South, where Wright experiences extreme poverty, racism, and violence. Wright is consistently abused, both by his family and his peers outside of his household. Even after his terrible beginnings, life doesn’t get much better, and he sees multiple people being abused and harassed by the harsh racism in the south. Things only get worse for Richard after he is forced to fight his friend because of white men. Richard ends up saving himself by obtaining a library card, which he can use to seek out knowledge to move to the north with.

“ (39) . By employing a violent tone in the dialogue , Wright emphasizes how loud and angry he argued against Granny because he felt irritated by her interrupting the story . Granny’s angered tone demonstrates how negative she felt about Richard being exposed to violent books due to her religious beliefs that disapprove of them. This dialogue demonstrates how Richard’s desire to continue the story ignited his violent protest against his grandmother who was trying discipline and protect him. In the dialogue, Richard states that he knew to stay quiet but he protested anyway this shows that his desire to keep reading pushed him to argue with Granny.

Lastly violence is an overarching compelling force in Wright’s life. From a young age the threat of physical violence put forth upon Wright by the people he associates with is used as a form of indoctrination, in order to force him into a certain mindset or actions. For example, after Wright’s unwillingness to go to the grocery store, because of the potential danger that lurked outside, his mother tells him that, “ if you come back into this house without those groceries, I’ll whip you” (Wright 31). It is only after his mother threatened him that Wright is forced to go out and bring home the groceries. The violence as a disciplinary action concept is also seen in Wright’s life as well.

Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement. If Wright were writing an autobiography titled “Black Boy”, today in 2017, about a black boy growing up in the United States, he would write about white people horribly expressing racism against African Americans, the brutality police officers perform on blacks, and the positively protesting movement, Black Lives Matter, which people engage in fighting for the rights of African Americans. During the time period of “Black Boy”, whites were awfully expressing racism towards African Americans. They would discriminate, despise, and violently mistreat them. If Richard Wright would be writing an autobiography about the life of a black boy today in 2017, he would write

Through this imagery, Wright gives the readers a chance to understand the ways in which racism was not just a matter of laws and policies, but a lived reality that had consequences for individuals and communities. Later in the memoir, Wright says "I would huddle in a corner, afraid to face the things I feared, trying to probe my past, to explore the depths of my feelings, to know myself. In the silence of my room, I would spend hours staring at the cracks in the ceiling, searching for the meaning of my life, seeking some glimmer of hope in the midst of despair" (Wright 71). In this quote, Wright uses imagery to describe the struggle to understand and define

He had told his mother about what had happened that day and in response, she had beaten Wright to the point of a fever, telling him to never fight white people again and that the white people were “right” for harming him and he should express gratitude that they

The book Black Boy, written by Richard Wright, shows the struggles the author goes through growing up in the Jim Crow South during the early 1900s. He writes about his job experiences, the different people he met, and how things changed in different parts of the United States. Richard Wright's lack of social development and opportunities was affected by his physical hunger, lack of income, and racial discrimination. In some parts of the book, Wright barely has enough money to eat food, especially without help from his grandma.

He would question people, asking about racial inequality desperate for an answer, but he never received one. Wright soon begins to see the world for what it has really come to although he still struggles to remember to act “differently” around whites, he is not able to see how African Americans are different than whites, not even thinking twice to treat whites differently. This ultimately causes problems from Wright growing up, but he desperately desired a world where he would be accepted for who he was, no matter the color of his skin or how he acted. He knows the only way he’d be able to survive as a black man is to move to the North where he believes he be able to be understood and have a more appropriate understanding of things. “The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever to what actually existed.

The pages 50-51 of Wright’s Black Boy, depict the reunion of Richard and his father, twenty five years after they had last seen each other. In this event the two are shown to be “forever strangers” (Wright 51), with the father now being a sharecropper in Mississippi. Wright uses tone, imagery, and characterization to portray the difference in character between the two, caused by the environments they lived in and the way society is structured. The way Wright describes the event in terms of tone is telling of how the experiences shaped their lives in different ways.

Since they do not earn a decent wage, they don’t have the minimum amount of luxury in their lives. They are deprived of homes, food and other essential necessities. The effect of racial discrimination discloses on Wright in the guise of starvation. As a child, Richard could not grasp the concept of racism. But when he grows up, he acknowledges why he and his sibling need to feast upon the leftover sustenance of the white individuals.

In Black Boy, Richard Wright leads a difficult life, yet he is able to persevere through it. Richard has an independent personality that protects him from getting betrayed, but his stubbornness causes him trouble to adapt to a better life. His superior intelligence gives him an advantage over others and makes him think about the future more than others, but they mistreat him for it. Because of his high intelligence, he shares a different moral of equality that makes him stand alone against the whites. The unique personality and beliefs of Richard Wright, like his stubbornness to change, lead to a life of isolation that caused his actions to deviate towards conflict pushing others away.

In other words, Mrs. Wright sent Richard to the store not so he could be beaten but so he could face the boys. If she hadn't did what she did, he would be scared of everyone all his life. Even though the method of her sending him was bloody, it was a very efficient way of getting him to stand up for himself and become the "man of the house" for his mother. The mother did not want to get involved but she helps him master his difficult situation. Richard finally understands that he cannot escape his problems and must face

Racial segregation affected many lives in a negative way during the 1900s. Black children had it especially hard because growing up was difficult to adapting to whites and the way they want them to act. In Black Boy, Richard Wright shows his struggles with his own identity because discrimination strips him of being the man he wants to be. Richard undergoes many changes as an individual because of the experience he has growing up in the south and learning how to act around whites.

Wright’s critique of racism in America includes a critique of the black community itself—specifically the black folk community that is unable or unwilling to educate him properly or accept his individual personality and