African Americans In The Long Dream And Savage Holidays

Richard Wright crafted stories that centered around racial problems in the United States. Wright writes about the treatment of African Americans in books such as Native Son, Black Boy, and The Long Dream. However, there was one novel that he wrote that put his readers into the perspective of a white man. Savage Holiday, meanwhile known as Wright’s “forgotten novel,” focuses on the life of a white man yet still has some similarities to Wright’s black characters. Fishbelly in The Long Dream and Erskine Fowler in Savage Holidays are oppressed characters who are trapped within their own heads, revealing that they are both psychologically wounded people that are easily manipulated by the world around them. Richard Wright was born in Mississippi

He must always be careful about how he associates himself with and what he does so that he does not get in trouble. The biggest fear that he has is that he does not want to get lynched. At the time white people would lynch African Americans for anything that they see as a misdoing. In these lynchings, they would mutilate the victims’ bodies in horrific ways. After seeing his friend Chris’s body after his death, he develops what can be known as a castration complex. This is a term used to refer to the fear of losing one’s genitalia and the anxieties that come with masculinity and femininity. After seeing the horrific image of his friend’s mutilated body, Wright states,“Fishbelly saw a dark, coagulated blot in a gaping hole between the thighs and, with defensive reflex, he lowered his hand nervously to his groin” (Wright, Dream 77). Seeing this instills the fear of losing his masculinity into the mind of Fishbelly. This becomes such an overwhelming fear of his that he is afraid to enter any sexual relationships in the future. Fishbelly’s problem with his sexual identity is not something reserved for only himself. It was a problem seen by many African Americans at the time. Many African Americans found themselves infatuated with the thought having sexual relations with white women.Yoshinobu Hakutani, in his article titled, “Creation of the Self in Richard Wright’s Black Boy.”writes, “White men did not mind black men’s talking about sex as long as it was not interracial” (Hakutani 87). The white men at the time had no problem talking about sex with African Americans, but it was a problem when they tried to take their women. This can be seen as very discriminatory because even though it was frowned upon white men were able to have relations and children with African American women. However, if an African American man was found in that same situation, he would be arrested and