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Figurative Language In Richard Wright's Black Boy

474 Words2 Pages

In his autobiographical novel, Black Boy, Richard Wright uses figurative language to communicate to readers his youthful disenchantment with the roles naturally assumed by most living creatures. Early on in the book, Wright shifts from one anecdote to the next using short lyric phrases, each phrase detailing an experience he has as a young boy that affects his perspective. In one of these sentences, Richard thinks back on the “disdain that filled” him as he tormented a crawfish that “huddled fearfully” away from him (Wright 15). He is uncomfortable with the implication of his being able to go through with such a thing, yet he continues to do so. Richard’s recognition of his “torture” of the crawfish and his continuing to torture the crawfish give the impression that he sees but does not understand why he should …show more content…

Richard is shaken that his father could just kill a bird so easily. This is similar to the instance of the crawfish, but this time, it is Richard’s father who commits the act. Being able to watch the pain of an animal as a spectator, he is shocked by the helplessness of the chicken compared to the ease with which his father kills it, and he learns that death can come to any living creature in any number of ways. It’s a loss of innocence for Richard to watch his father take an animal’s life because he doesn’t understand why the chicken deserved to die when and how it did. Finally, Wright ponders the idea of the “great joke” that God has played on cats and dogs because they “llap their milk with their tongues” (Wright 15). Richard pities the cats and dogs. The demeaning nature of having to eat or drink from a bowl or without hands leads Richard to believe that cats and dogs have been wronged in some way. He feels like as though dogs and cats were cheated out of a different life simply because of the bodies they were born

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