Black Boy Reflection

This book is all about the real-life experience of Richard Wright. He indicated in this book all the struggles and doubts of his life. He also found out that he has the mastery to conduct his powerful emotions through literature and decided to transfer in Chicago to pursue his dream. His book which is “Black Boy” was another immediate best seller, is often considered his most fully realized work. The book derives its aesthetic design from two distinct but interwoven narrative skeins. In the process, Wright analyses how poverty, intolerance, and racism shaped his personality but also fed his creativity, enabling him to view his pain as an embodiment of the existential human condition.

Black Boy presents a fierce definition of violence, suffering,

The central motif of the work is the gnawing hunger defining every facet of Richard’s existence: physical hunger born of his family’s worsening poverty after his father’s abandonment; emotional hunger rooted in that abandonment, compounded by his mother’s prolonged illnesses, and resulting in his alienation from other black people; and intellectual hunger exacerbated by his limited formal schooling and the repressive religious fundamentalism of his maternal relatives. Wright had initially chosen “American Hunger” as his title, and it was later applied to the second volume of his autobiographical writings, published posthumously in 1977. Richard’s responses to the conditions of his life are, from the first, a volatile combination of rebellion, anger, and fear. Black Boy opens with a bored and peevish four-year-old Richard retaliating against

By the age of fifteen, he had known an uncle lynched for being “too” successful and knew of a black youth murdered for forgetting the strict sexual taboos surrounding interchanges between black men and white women. He had been personally assaulted without provocation by white youths and had participated in street battles between white and black adolescents. His insistent pursuit of a way out of the South is thus a reaction to the physical terrorism exercised against the black community. It is also a repudiation of the psychological condition that racism fosters in its victims. Richard has already suffered for years from the debilitating anxiety caused by trying to predict the behavior of white people, and he has often felt the impact of their displeasure, repeatedly losing jobs when they resent his manner or ambition. Wright asserts that his personality bears permanent scars as a southern black man, scars that explain his emotional and philosophical alienation as well as his unresolved anger. However, they also serve as the creative wellspring of his powerful artistry. Wright leaves no doubt about his resentment of the white racist social order that defined his youth; what is more difficult to resolve is the ambivalence toward black people that permeates Black Boy. By the time he reaches adulthood, Wright finds