Identity In Richard Wright's Black Boy

Superior Essays
Before analyzing the problem of identity in the Black American literature like Back Boy, we must have a more precise notion of the term identity. The term identity seems not only to have pervaded the literature on the Negro revolution in the U.S.A., but also to have come to represent in India (and in other countries) something in the revolutionary psychological field of the colored races and nations who seek (try to find) inner as well as outer emancipation from colonial rule and colonial power. Social scientists sometimes attempt to make it more concrete, using such terms as "identity crisis," "self-identity" or "sexual identity." For the sake of logical or experimental maneuverability, they try to treat these terms as matters of social roles, …show more content…
Its main purpose is to attack and refute the white South’s view of him as a ‘‘boy,’’ as an inferior version of whites. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, Wright instructs his readers that they do not see him, but rather a belief about him. He is resolutely insisting, through the structure and themes of Black Boy, that he be granted the same dignity and autonomy his readers want for themselves. He is also looking for the understanding and sympathy that he felt lacking from his family, community, and the white South (Felgar, Robert,1998).
In chapter one of a “Black Boy”, awareness comes to young Wright at the age of four. This awareness for a black child carries with it mixed and contradictory emotions: love, fear, guilt, distrust, longing and feeling of hopelessness, all within the early stage of growing up. So, Wright opens his eyes as a child and find his psyche’ entrenched with an image reflecting the social and racial realities of his
…show more content…
He concluded "that those powerful, invisible white faces ruled the lives of black people to a degree that hut few black people could allow themselves to acknowledge." This idea has a curious effect on Wright's characters such as Fishbelly, Bigger or "Black Boy." They hate the whites so much and they are so ashamed of being black that they feel in crisis, a crisis of alienation from their own group and from the world of the whites from which they had been excluded. Fish was aware "how black people looked to white people; he was beginning to look at his people through alien eyes and what he saw evoked in him a sense of distance between him and his people that baffled and worried him (Wright, Long Dream, p. 326.)
In Black boy, an auto biography by Richard Wright, we see the struggles of being black in a world dominated by white people. Black boy is a story about how a young black man fights the societal norms that are continuously pushed upon him. He does this by questioning the position that the white dominated society has given him. He asks questions about the status quo in his country that his black peers are afraid to ask .Richard is a boy who wants to change his life for the better but his environment is not conducive to gifted young boys like

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    As a child or an adult, everyone feel the need to be acknowledged from one and another. As a person, everyone needs their spotlight sometimes, we all wanted a reputation, status, responsibility. Black Boy is a memoir by Richard Wright, where he illustrates his status and reputation in the South as a child, teen and adult. Richard goes through many mistreatments and disrespects, the community around him rejects his fundamental rights of a mentally healthy human being. In Richard Wright’s Black Boy, Richard struggles with how to feel good about himself, but ultimately his experience promotes him to be a great writer that unites people through his words.…

    • 1210 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Richard Wright lived in the 1930 's, a time when blacks and whites were rigidly separated, and, despite the struggle, the stereotypes of black people included a life of crime and destruction. Wright tells the story of Native Son mainly to raise social awareness to the rising problem of racial differences. Despite the strength of the overlying message of racial tension, intertwined within the story is a subliminal yet unmistakable message of sexism, specifically the discrimination of women and the damaging effect this suppression has on its female victims. The physical abuse inflicted upon Mary and Bessie by the men in Native Son represents the objectification of women and power men have over women in a patriarchal society .…

    • 1078 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Imagine the feeling of living in a Jim Crow south after the Civil War. In Richard Wright’s autobiography “Black Boy”, he illustrates his life as he tries to understand the segregated and the white dictated world he lives in. Throughout the story he asks questions to others and himself to attempt at understanding the world. Since the book is an autobiography, it allows the reader to take a front row seat with the story. “Black Boy” is one of the many books that were challenged for a myriad of reasons.…

    • 827 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Richard Wright’s Story Native Son is based on the racial situations in the 1930’s. The novel is focused on the life of Bigger Thomas, a poor 20 year old Negro, living in poverty in the poor black area of Chicago south side. The setting emphasizes the effect that racism restricts blacks in value and opportunity. In response to which, Bigger commits multiple and progressively violent crimes including rape, murder, and a couple atrocities that seduced him with hint of freedom in return, up until the aftereffect restricted his freedom when his crimes are revealed and he is captured and put to the ultimate trial to determine his termination.. Initially, a crime provides sense of freedom, but eventually consequences torment the criminal.…

    • 1136 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    AVID Mission Statement

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages

    AVID Mission Statement My childhood was spent with four women. They constructed a space for me that was void of the manacles of racial standards, an expanse free for me to roam and wallow freely in its immaculate glory. As i endeavored to America, this space shrunk further and further until it had transformed into a cramped chamber. For the first time, I had to grapple with what it meant to be black, to have your skin’s…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    As a young black male growing up in the rough south of America, Richard Wright learned very early of his place in society. Wright grew up in a world of poverty, hunger and a lack of education. But that didn’t stop his hunger for knowledge and his desire to become an established author. Richard Wright published Black Boy to pinpoint the struggles of Black Americans during the early 1900s. Richard Wright was born after the civil war, and before the civil rights movement.…

    • 1995 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Racial Wealth Gap

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages

    From a “necessary evil” to Emancipation Proclamation, from segregation to the Civil Rights Act and 15th Amendment, African Americans’ social status was changing positively when they were freed from the title of slave and were widely accepted by other races. Although their life has definitely improved dramatically in the past decades, but they never really achieved the main purpose of the Civil Rights Movement, gaining racial equality between whites and blacks. Writer Richard Wright was born after the Civil War but before the Civil Rights Movement. If he were to write a book named Black Boy about an African American boy growing up in the United States today, he will write about the racial significance of Barack Obama’s election, comparing the…

    • 1207 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For example, Wright expressed the severity of his hunger and the ways he tried to cope with it through his detailed descriptions. In addition, the author describes the whites ' sense of superiority over blacks as well as the blacks’ fear and hatred of the whites. Racism, as apparent in Black Boy, is fueled by a feeling of superiority. This feeling made Southern whites feel that they could do whatever they wanted with a race that, in their view, was lesser in status to them, such as African Americans. As a result, African Americans in the 20th century found themselves receiving lower wages than white workers, segregated from white people, and force to submit themselves to Southern white people 's…

    • 1180 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In Richard Wright’s memoir Black Boy, Wright informs readers of the hardship of being a black boy growing up in the early 20th century and how he has overcome many obstacles in his life such as racism, segregation, prejudice, and…

    • 1197 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the story Black Boy by Richard Wright it tells us about the story of his youth and the struggles and hardships he faces during it. Although the story seems to just be about his struggles the story is actually about how Richard is scared that he’ll never be accepted. He fears this because he has never been accepted in his young life not by his family, work, and even not by his culture making Richard feel like he’ll never truly be accepted in his life…

    • 792 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Richard Wright’s African American literature expresses the theme of exploring black identity(World Book Discover, 2015). Richard Wright wrote many popular books with this theme in mind including Native Son and Black Boy. Wright lived in a time of racial segregation which greatly affected his work and views on the American Dream (Galens et al. ,2001). The American Dream is the idea that every US citizen should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative. Richard Wright condemns the idea of the American Dream in his books Native Son , Black Boy, and Uncle Tom 's Children that expresses African American’s struggles as well as his own struggles through racial conflicts, whites…

    • 1326 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Black Boy, Wright slams the idea that African American individuals will get nowhere in life. At the time, literature had such a huge impact on societal views. Even though these authors faced initial backlash from groups that disagreed with their ideas, they are now praised for their efforts to raise awareness…

    • 1423 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Black Boy Richard Wrights experience with isolation suggests that because he has been isolated by everyone in his life, including his own family, that he has stopped believing that there are kind people in the world, reminding us that we should never lose hope in the fact that things can always improve and we should always remember that every bad thing always end, even if it seems like it will last forever. Wright is standing outside the clothes shop where he works, and he sees his white boss and his son drag a petrified looking black woman out of their car, past a white police officer, and several Caucasian passers-by, none of whom even bat an eye, and into the store Wright hears the screams of the woman who stumbles out bloody and beaten.…

    • 635 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Black boy is a memoir written by Richard Wright describing his childhood all the way to his adult life. He begins his memoir with his earliest memory of setting his grandmother 's house on fire with a broomstick. Shortly after they move to Memphis,Tennessee to a new house. Richard’s father leaves them for another woman and after that Richard and his brother only see their father a couple of times. After their father leaves Richard’s mother is forced to work to provide for them.…

    • 1435 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Throughout much of African American literature there is a perpetual underlying theme; double consciousness. As if one were a comic book character with an alter ego, one has to put on a facade in order to be regarded as acceptable, civil, and not threatening. It is a concept among early African American literary people that explains a inner "twoness" and never having an individual unified identity because of this. It is thought to be expressed because of the oppression and disvaluement of blacks in a white dominated society. Du Bois explains that because of this, it is hard for blacks to be able to relate to having a black identity and having a American identity.…

    • 888 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays