Comparison Of Black Boy And The Grapes Of Wrath

In the novel The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, we learn about the main character Tom and his family who undergo many hardships on their way to California. However in the memoir Black Boy by Richard Wright we see that the main character Richard experiences the same encounter, but through which he and his family go through more violence, and hunger than shown in The Grapes of Wrath. Though Tom and Richard’s life are similar in many ways they are both very different too. Each author Steinbeck and Wright brought many ideas throughout their novel or memoir. Steinbeck raises the idea of people being able to achieve a better life through working and staying together to do something. In Black Boy Wright raises the idea of equality for all. Working …show more content…
Those ideas that the author raises can either do good or interfere with the characters. Many characters will be in conflict with these types of ideas, but many will also work with them. Tom the main character in The Grapes of Wrath struggles with group achievement and sticking together to attain things. Rather, Tom always seems to be detached from the group that works together to get from Oklahoma to California. Steinbeck’s ideas of group effort don’t exactly agree with Tom’s ways and it’s because he doesn’t like to work in groups. Instead, he seems to struggle through things individually. In Chapter Twenty Eight, the group leaves the camp, but Tom however goes his own way from being caught. He doesn’t stick together with his family and he makes it on his own without help from others who he can rely on for support and advice. He also doesn’t seem to obtain what has occurred to both him and his family. The idea that Wright raises about equality for all does and doesn’t help Richard throughout the memoir because, in this memoir, Richard believes that everyone is being treated equally,but Richard ends up getting treated unfairly because he is black. This idea, however also leads him through his life until he figures out that not everyone is treated fairly. As a kid, Richard didn’t understand how the whites and black were different. So because he didn’t seem to realize the difference, he never understood the unfair treatment he was getting. He believed and thought that everyone was treated the same. At the beginning of the book, Richard states “ he had seen white men and women upon the streets many times, but they had never looked particularly white... They were merely people like other people”(37). However, this wasn’t the case. He would treat the whites the same he treated his people because he didn’t see the difference among the two and so he believed that they were all alike. Richard, however, struggles to