Richard Wright Hyperbole

Through visual imagery and colloquial diction Wright portrays an intimidating image of his father preceding their last visit in Memphis. Age now withered his father into nothing intimidating at all, “Smiling toothlessly, his hair whitened, his body bent…his fearsome aspect of twenty-five years ago gone forever from him.” Time is of the essence in this excerpt because of the predominant emphasis placed upon time and nature. With the use of this hyperbole, Wright exaggerates time “A quarter of a century” to show the infrequency of their visits. The predominant repetition of this hyperbole shows the biggest issue Wright held with his father, one can infer that trust was possibly broken here. Time is also used to show the difference between Wright and his father. …show more content…
Whereas, Wright was more advanced and willing to escape the divergent life chosen by his parents, his father was more set in his ways, “I was overwhelmed to realize that he could never understand me or the scalding experiences that had swept me beyond his life.” Post-World War II, there was a societal phenomenon that commonly existed in American households, children felt as if they had to live up to their parents standards, but Wright broke the mold. Wright and his father “were forever strangers, speaking different language, living on vastly distant planes of reality.” With the use of emotional appeals, Wright illustrates the rejection he felt as a young child, “[He] who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me.” Both Wright and his father were connected to the city, but in different effects, Wrights outcome was “[the] undreamed-of shores of knowing” whereas his father’s was “a black peasant who gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the