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Rhetorical Analysis Essay On Black Boy

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The Nonfiction Novel, Black Boy was written By Richard Wright. In the Novel Richard uses various tools of rhetorical to convey his point of determination and aspiration while growing up as an African American boy in Jim Crow South, facing the social and economic struggles that were very stereotypical for African Americans during the time. Black Boy is about a long lived struggle of hunger. Wright is faced with daily obstacles and struggles living in poverty as he is determined to leave behind these circumstances of African Americans. Wright struggles with hunger started within his family when he was just a young boy. His family was not physically capable of providing him with the necessities required, such as love, acceptance and a strong …show more content…

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. Yet, by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me” (168). This strong sense of hope and pride follows him wherever he goes leading him to believe that one day he will live in a place that is comprehensible to …show more content…

Wright never got the chance to really fit in because of his differences amongst others. Although his desires to fit in were strong, his inability to understand their points of views was impossible. "I longed to be among them, yet when with them I looked at them as if they were a million miles away. I had been kept out of their world too long to ever be able to become a real part of it." (151) He longed for acceptance, but his misunderstanding of ways left him in the cold with his need for a better understanding because he is not able to comprehend why he could never fit in anywhere he went. Wright was soon not able to be fully comfortable with speaking his mind and opinions with others stating: "I began to be aware of myself as a distinct personality striving against others. I held myself in, afraid to act or speak until I was sure of my surroundings, feeling most of the time that I was suspended over a void."(30) This behavior of not speaking out eventually separated him from those around him, leaving him in the dark without the love and acceptance he desperately needed to

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Because Wright’s family has no food, Richard Wright decides to finally find a job that will get him some food at lunch and delivers papers with one of his classmates. Wright continues to sell the newspaper to his friends around the area and makes some money so that he can eat something during lunchtime. However, one of his customers tells him that the newspapers he is selling are actually praising the Ku Klux Klan. This is a complete shock to Richard Wright because he never reads the newspaper. This supports the claim that Wright is thoroughly affected by his hunger because if he wasn’t hungry, he wouldn’t have sold the papers preaching about the Ku Klux Klan.

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