Black Boy Critical Analysis

More than fifty years after his death in 1960, Richard Wright is still generally considered one of the greatest African American writers. He is best known for his depictions of the racial discrimination and the hardships African Americans had to face in the Jim Crow South. In his autobiography Black Boy, published in 1945, Wright even provides his personal account of what it meant to grow up as an African American in the segregated south in the early twentieth century. In the book, Wright not only recalls the economic and social hardships he and his family had to endure as well as the constant and omnipresent white racism, but also his growing determination to rebel against and finally escape his hostile and imprisoning southern environment. Given the fact that, being an autobiography, Black Boy centers on Wright's personal struggle and is written entirely from his point of view, it is not surprising that most critical analyses of the work also focus on him. Other characters, however, such as his family members, have not received much critical attention yet. This essay, therefore, seeks to focus Richard's mother Ella Wright. A close reading of …show more content…
In chapter two, for example, we learn that, just like Richard, Ella does not like living in religious household of her mother, who is a strict Seventh-day Adventist. And although Ella's illness forces them to stay there, in chapter six, she chooses to attend a different church despite her mother's anger and disgust, which can be seen as a form of rebellion. In addition, at the end of chapter five, Wright reports how he once successfully rebelled against his grandmother, who had refused to let him work on Saturdays. Upon hearing this, he notes, his mother “smiled” and “hobbled to him on her paralytic legs” to reward him with a kiss despite her severe illness (Wright