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An Analysis Of Richard Wright's The Rights To The Streets Of Memphis

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A mother should love for her children. What can be said about a mother's love when she threatens to whip her child? Is she being excruciating? Richard Wright's short story "The Rights to the Streets of Memphis," characterize Mrs. Wright as strong, caring, and wise black woman who is forced with a difficult situation. Should she "baby" him and prevent him from fighting, or should she encourage him to fight and "stand up like a man"? The story can be disputed in two parts. In the first part, we hear about a family that hungers, and in the second part we hear about how Mrs. Wright gets a job and gives one of the sons the mission to be the head of the family. She was left alone to raise her children on her own. They had no food and no money, for this reason, she made her son do something he wasn't prepared for.

Mrs. Wright stayed strong during difficult family crisis. She never broke down about her sons' father absence in their life. Mrs. Wright is a very strong black woman. She was willing to find a job for her sons so they could have food to eat considering their father had left. He was the one that always brought home food. Wright questioned Richard "Where's your father, and who brings food into this house?" At the time he didn't know his father had left. Therefore, she made her son, Richard, face his fears by walking the …show more content…

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

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For example, when his performance in school was poor she would notice. When she noticed he was singing along to a song he had just hear two days ago, Joy told him you are not learning the work because you can’t it is because “you are just not working hard enough,” (Wes 76). His mother was constantly watching over his actions in order make sure her son was growing up to be a successful person. In addition, his grandparents watched over him. They used the money they saved to visit their family in Jamaica and helped their daughter, Joy, send him to Valley Forge Military School, where his life changed.

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Just to show how separate these two stories are, Black Boy opens up with young Richard lighting straw on fire in his grandmother’s furnace while his brother repeatedly tells him to stop. Richard then sets his grandmother’s curtains ablaze just to understand what would happen. This event is a representation of Richard’s constant struggle to understand the separation between black and white and the way the world works now while at the same time being constantly badgered about how he should stop trying to understand everything and should just go along with everything. Because of Richard’s constant desire to understand everything, he repeatedly creates turmoil in his numerous households. An example being when he moves back into his grandmother’s house and takes up an extreme obsession with reading while his heavily religious grandmother, who believes that anything fictional is the work of the devil.

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"But mama she'll beat me, beat me for nothing. I'm not going to let her beat me: I don't care what happens!" (109) Richard is going to be beaten for lying to Miss Wilson, but Richard doesn't stand for that. Richard pulls a knife out on his family member to prevent himself from getting abused. Richard is constantly struggling to protect himself. "

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When forced into a situation, some people crush under the pressure, but others prevail through it. This is proven in the story The Rights to the Streets of Memphis when a boy, the narrator, overcomes his fear. In the beginning of the short story, the narrator’s family is not able to provide food to put on the table. When the mother finally gets a job, she sends the narrator to the store to get food where he is attacked by a gang of boys. After being attacked multiple times, the narrator’s mother sends him back again, but this time he fights back against the boys.

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She craved attention and freedom and the only way to achieve that is by disposing of the one thing that ruined her. Ms. Hale explained that Mr. Wright wasn’t much of a talker and didn’t like anybody in his business “ (he said) folks talked too much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet—I guess you know about how much he talked himself.” (10). The root of Mr. Wright’s isolation is unknown but maybe, if he'd married someone who loved to be alone like himself, he wouldn't have ended up the way he

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Richard has always felt the unjust of race, and has felt how segregation made it hard for him to have a future. But when he gets a chance to get revenge on the whites, he refuses when he thinks ”Who wanted to look them straight in the face, who wanted to walk and act like a man.(200)” Stealing went against his morals of the right way to succeed and would not help the community appearance to the whites. The community as a whole is very religous but Richard does not share these beliefs, even with the persistence of his friends and family he says ”Mama, I don't feel a thing.(155)” This caused his friends to beg him, but in face of rejection they leave him alone.

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She was oppressed like the majority of women during the 1920s, but as most women she was beginning to stand up for her rights just like all women who supported the women’s rights movement. Her loss of voice is symbolic of the right to vote that women did not have in the early 1900s. In the play evidence suggest that Mrs. Wright murdered her husband and although imprisoned, she has gained her freedom by killing her husband. This is synonymous with women fighting back against men to gain their right to vote in 1920 essentially regaining their “voice” in government.

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Richard quickly grows up and is mature enough to ask questions about his race, which is clear when Wright says, “My grandmother, who was as white as any white person, had never looked white to me” (23). RIchard is starting to ask himself an important question: What does it mean to be white? He wonders why his grandmother is black instead of white, which commences his wonderings about what the roots of racism really are. RIchard begins to curiously ask more and more questions, showcasing his curiosity and need for answers, when he says, “Granny looks white.. Then why is she living with us coloured folks...did granny become coloured when she married grandpa?”

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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.

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“I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what we said and what we left unsaid” (Wright 181). Richard uses his observation of whites to guide himself on how to act and react around white people. For example he must agree with the whites even if he truly disagrees. For example he must agree with the whites even if he truly disagrees. “I answered with false heartiness, falling quickly into that nigger-being-a-good-natured-boy-in-the- presence-of-a-white-man pattern, a pattern into which I could now slide easily” (Wright 234).

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The story represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally, even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect or with fellow blacks. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. “It might have been that my tardiness in learning to sense white people as "white" people came from the fact that many of my relatives were "white"-looking people. My grandmother, who was white as any "white" person, had never looked "white" to me” (Wright 23).

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