Richard Wright's Violence In 'How To Read Literature Like A Professor'

Most of Richard Wright’s violence occurred not for the sake of pure violence, but because he needed to defend himself against others and the injustice that he faced. Wright wasn’t inherently violent, but he saw it as a way to even the playing field against people who would abuse their authority to wrongfully punish him. For example, when Wright’s father wanted him to make the stray kitten leave, Wright used violence to protest against his father. This is seen when he states, “I knew that he had not really meant for me to kill the kitten, but my deep hate of him urged me toward a literal acceptance of his word” (Wright 11). This shows how Wright’s motive for violence wasn’t just for the sake of causing trouble, but instead, to protest against his father and what Wright saw as an abuse of power.

Applying this concept, Wright’s act of violence symbolizes how he was willing to oppose power when he saw it as oppressive, even if it came from an extremely authoritative figure with a lot of power, like his father. By using violence, Wright showed how he could still protest even when he thought that his father was oppressing him. Wright supports this when he later states, “I was happy because I had at last found a way to throw my criticism of him into his face...I had made him know that I felt he was cruel” (Wright 12). This is significant because it shows how Wright’s anger was fuelled by what he saw as injustice, as seen by how he thinks that his father was unnecessarily cruel. The anger that Wright had as a result of what he saw as his father’s injustice caused him to be violent, which is why he killed the kitten as a form of