Richard Wright: Boy Who Grows Up in the South During the Jim Crow Era and His Novel Black Boy
Australian poet Judith Wright once wrote, “We are hungry for more; if we do not consciously pursue more, we create less for ourselves and make it more difficult to experience more in life.” She reminds society that continuously wanting more, whether it be a material object or an emotional desire, is what creates growth. This message is clear in the life of Richard Wright, a young boy who grows up in the South during the Jim Crow era. Throughout his book, Black Boy, there are many things that Richard desires in the hope that he will gain both emotional satisfaction and intellectual understanding. From a young age, Richard hungers for love and acceptance, an understanding of the world, and finally the hunger that is fed by all others: knowledge.
A young Richard first hungers for love and acceptance from his pernicious family and disparate friends. His family prefers not to communicate with him, and any conversations are often better described as a confrontation. This situation is clear in Richard’s relationship with his Aunt Addie. As a schoolteacher, Aunt Addie blamed Richard for the food she finds on her classroom floor and then proceeds to beat Richard for the mess. When she finds out that Richard was not to blame, she still wants to beat him for lying to her. The fight ends with Aunt Addie never wanting to speak to Richard. This makes Richard feel even more distant and alienated within his own household and strengthens his belief that nothing he ever does will satisfy his elders. Wright portrays his feelings about the situation best when he writes, “I was conscious that she had descended to my emotional level in order to rule me, and my respect for her sank”. As arguments become more frequent, Richard slowly loses respect for all of his family members, leading to less communication and feelings of love between them. Even during friendly conversations, Richard does not trust his family members. For example, when Richard’s mom and grandmother are trying to make him believe in God, Richard states “the entire family became kind and forgiving, but I knew the motives that prompted their change and it drove me an even greater emotional distance from them”. Richard never feels truly integrated with his family, and this creates a wall that keeps him distant from the love that he hungers for. The lack of integration also affects Richard’s friendships, where it is clear that he is never truly accepted. This is attributed to the fact that Richard’s fundamental views of the world differ so greatly from his friends that they do not agree upon any subject. Wright describes this by observing “I longed to be among them, yet when with them I looked at them as if they were a million miles away. I had been kept out of their world too long to ever be able to become a real part of it”. No matter how much Richard spends time with his friends, he is never able to understand their conversations or beliefs. Richard’s separation and reluctance to agree with his family and friends leave him isolated from relationships. He becomes more introverted, which only makes it harder to fulfill his hunger for love and acceptance.
Richard’s incapability to bond with his friends leads to his hunger for an understanding of the world, which he is often deprived of. He ponders over why he can not seem to fit in anywhere, and it eventually becomes clear that his inability to be accepted by his friends stems from his misconstrued understanding of the racial inequalities between blacks and whites. Starting at the age of six, Richard longs for an understanding of the relations between the two races. He states, “I wanted to understand these two sets of people who lived side by side and never touched, except in violence”. The hunger for this understanding leads to Wright ask the adults around him questions about the interactions of blacks and whites. His questions are never answered, and he is often punished for even daring to ask them. Due to him never learning about the way he is expected to act, Richard develops his own naive understanding of racial stereotypes. He begins to believe “that there were good white people, people with money and sensitive feelings”. While this is often true, Richard does not realize that there will still be times when he has to alter his behavior because he is seen as inferior. The lack of understanding continuously gets him in trouble due to his ignorance of performing the etiquette that is expected from a black man living in the South. Though this all seems negative, the hunger for understanding and acceptance in the world is what leads Richard to the idea of traveling north. Richard explains what the North means to him by saying, “The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; … by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me”. Richard’s lack of understanding of the world leads him to believe that the North will be completely different, but this is far from the truth. While Richard’s situation would have slightly improved, the absence of understanding he has about race would have still caused massive problems for him. The hunger to understand is what drives Richard to want more out of his life, and he attempts to accomplish this by moving to the slightly less racist North. Richard eventually realizes that he does not possess enough knowledge about the stereotypes of America to live a successful life, and he begins to understand that he needs to learn how he is expected to act in order to minimize the amount of trouble he gets into. After this realization, Richard’s quest for knowledge takes over his life.
The largest of Wright’s hunger is his hunger for knowledge, and this is what makes him so unique from those around him. At the same time, the uniqueness also causes alienation from the rest of society. Despite the harm, the hunger for knowledge is what gives Richard a path in life. Although he does not regularly attend school, Richard begins to encounter structured knowledge at a young age. He is first taught to count to 100 by a coal man and then is read a book by Ella. The few years of formal education he does receive are hampered by family problems, and Richard explains his extreme need for knowledge by saying “to starve in order to learn about my environment was irrational, but so was my hunger”. Richard’s curiosity leads to him becoming thoroughly interested in books, whether it be writing them or reading them. He fully discovers books when he gains access to a library card. In the end, Richard’s hunger for knowledge is cyclic. Each thing he learns about makes him more curious about another topic, leaving him in a constant state of learning. The hunger for knowledge is the driving force that shapes Richard’s life. It leaves him unable to remain silent as he is expected to do in the South, and this makes him even more of an outcast. However, Richard continues to pursue intellectual competence despite the obstacles in his way. His hunger for knowledge is his greatest weakness because it alienates him from others, but it is also his greatest strength because it acts as the motivation for the key positive events in his life, such as his move north and the development of his love for writing.
Black Boy makes it clear that Richard Wright’s hunger is the cause of his greatest weaknesses as well as his greatest strengths. As Richard hungers for love and acceptance, an understanding of the world, and knowledge, he creates his biggest weaknesses in the forms of enemies and misconstrued understandings. However, it is more important to consider how Richard’s hunger has actually been responsible for the key positive events in his life, such as the discovery that the North may be the better place for him and the introduction to the world of writing, which opens up many new avenues for him. Ultimately, it becomes obvious that one can not hunger for a goal without expecting both bad times and good times. And one can not reach a goal without overcoming obstacles along the way. In the end, both peaks and valleys are inevitable and what creates growth is the constant and conscious pursuit for more.
