Critical Analysis of the Book Black Boy by Richard Wright under the Theme of Identity (original) (raw)
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Black Identity and Black Protest in Richard Wright's "Black Boy
The present paper deals with the problem of Black's identity and their protest in white dominated American society. American Blacks are the sons and daughters of darkness journeying through untold sorrows and sufferings. Identity is their problem. Dreams they have and nightmares theyconfront. With the beginning of Black or Harlem Renaissance in 1920-30, a large majority of writers appeared on the literary scene who started glorifying the Blacks. Richard Wright is one of thesewriters who made an indelible mark on the minds of the readers through his sketches of the oppressed Negroes. This has paved the way for a new generation of Negro writers to dwell on the hitherto undisclosed facts about discrimination of Blacks.Keywords
Wright's Black Boy: A Narrative of Black Experience
Journal of Liberal Arts and Humanities (JLAH), 2022
This paper attempts to analyze the depiction of black life in Richard Wright's Black Boy. It examines how socio-cultural circumstances create obstacles for Negroes and make black community suffer. Black Boy, which depicts extreme poverty and the writer's accounts of racial violence against the blacks, primarily is an attack on racist Southern white society. Utilizing the narrative inquiry approach, it concentrates on black American life and highlights the issues of racism and gender oppression. The conflict between the black and the white communities, the victimization of the blacks by the dominant whites, and the violence and bloodshed within the black communities have been the dominant themes in Wright's works. This paper claims that black American literature opposes racism and oppression in all ramifications to overcome the self-pride and self-identity of black race. The pursuit of identity is a continuous process where the potential aspects of the present and the past, of the individual and society, play a vital role.
Racism and the Crisis of Racial Identity in Richard Wright's Black Boy
Racism and the Crisis of Racial Identity in Richard Wright's Black Boy Despite long exclusion from the American canon, African Americans have contributed much to the U.S.'s history, culture, and literature. African Americans' literary contribution has come as a way of expressing their desires and dreams, depicting their struggles and troubles, and asserting their individual and collective identities. Although they have suffered from different forms of torture and anguish such as slavery, racism, and oppression, they show their uprising, resistance, and literary creations. Richard Wright (1908-1960) is one of the Afro-American authors using his pen and voice to protest against white racism and the mistreatment of blacks, notably in his autobiography Black Boy (1945). He lived from 1900 to 1950 when African Americans faced various forms of oppression and when citizens and state governments openly discriminated against African Americans with seeming impunity. 1 Under the Jim Crow laws, the blacks witnessed racism and various forms of oppression. This paper discusses racism and its destructive effects in Richard Wright's Black Boy. It also shows how discriminatory practices and oppressive forces help create an authentic racial identity.
IMPACT OF RACISM ON IDENTITY AND SOCIAL IN RICHARD WRIGHT's NATIVE SON AND BLACK BOY
The current article focuses on the investigation of the theme of social and racial identity of the African American characters in the fictional works of Richard Wright?s Native Son (1940) and autobiography Black Boy (1945) created a controversial world shocking the sensibilities of both Black and White America by presenting the cultural and social realities behind racism that has been a matter of question in the United States for centuries. In the social climate characterized by racial conflicts and psychic tension specific to the previously mentioned period, the identity formation process of the Negroes is a highly debatable and a never ending one. Therefore numerous literary exemplifications from Richard Wright?s novels and short stories will be offered, including Wright?s self-referential account that also illustrates the tragedy of an author held captive in a hostile world. Thus, this study aimed to discuss how the racial stereotypical picture held in both groups? mind became destructive and double-edged racism by focusing on racism on identity, social and cultural conflicts of racism in Wright?s Native Son and in Black Boy.
International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL), 2017
The present article seeks to critically examine Richard Wright's Black Boy under the light of Homi Bhabha's hybridity. It tries to reexamine the way this notion has been defined and inspect the way one's familiarity with this notion informs one's reading of Black Boy. The contemporary age observes a wide variety of thinkers dealing with the notion of hybridity, among whom Bhabha is the key figure. Hybridity is among the major key terms which affect postcolonial discourse. This article surveys how hybridity is defined in interaction with related concepts and demonstrates the way hybridity informs the reading of the different layers of meaning in this work. At first it examines historical context in which the story takes place and the historical perspective of black writing narrative and the effects of racism and oppression, which include poverty and hunger and the ways through which the blacks reacted to racism. Further, it reviews materials relevant to this article and also shed more light in the circumstances that brought the black to the unfriendly society in which they found themselves today. And finally, it aims to explore the characters mainly the protagonist of the story, Richard; and also others to have the role on Richard's growth and the way of shaping his worldview. Through the depiction of his own childhood, Wright universalizes childhood of many African-American children growing up in the old South in the first half of the twentieth century.
International Journal of English and Literature, 2019
Literature of the Black Diaspora locates within its multi-layered gamut, a kaleidoscope of artistic productions; self-narratives careered by the quest for identity and self-expatriation from a ruthless atmosphere of slavery and racial subjugation. Studies have fixated on thematic preoccupation, language form in works of Afro-American and Caribbean traditions. Not so much has been explored especially on identity and journey motifs in the autobiographical novels of both traditions. This study seeks to interrogate novels from both climes for the purpose of foregrounding the signposts of journey through plot characterisation. For the purpose of this study on plot character reading of novels of the two literary traditions, we shall deploy aspects of Aderemi Raji-Oyelade's reading kinesis, a character theory which hinges on two axioms of character kinesis. One privileges the reader who attempts to construct a network of transformative acts of the main character negotiating a conscious retrieval of his/her presence in the text. The other is the kinetic dimension which underlines the function of the character as he/she evolves in a process of motion introducing, confirming or contradicting and ultimately completing the image of the self. Characters' movements towards awareness are evident in V.S Naipaul's A House for Mr Biswas, Michael Anthony's A Year in San Fernando, George Lamming's In the Castle of My Skin, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Richard Wright's Black Boy. These texts were subjected to critical analyses to show their identarian aesthetics informed by character transmutability. All the texts evince a great degree of the kinetic reader's locomotive sense of self struggle and realization gleaned from the characters' textual kinesis. Literature of the Black Diaspora, drawing from two major traditions of prose writings, employs similar aesthetic rendering of the self; that is, their ordeals in the excruciating environment where their colour confines them to the receiving side of the yoke of second class citizenry.
SELF-DISCOVERY JOURNEY OF WOMEN: RICHARD WRIGHT'S BLACK BOY
Richard Wright is often discouraged and hindered by women whose lives touch him in his journey toward self-discovery in Black Boy. These women, including his mother, his Granny, his Aunt Addie, Mrs. Moss, her daughter Bess, and Wright's neighbors, can be strong, nurturing, defensive, and good-hearted, although many are indifferent to his dreams, and some are even heartless. But on the other hand, women, even more than men, confirm the complying, traditional values of family, tribe, and religion, and accept limitations imposed by society, even when those limitations are hostile to their self-interest and discovery. This article argues that Richard Wright is notably impressed by the adventures of female caharacters in Black Boy and their touching stories and these women characters make significant contribution to his selfdiscovery.
Black Boy': A Post-Colonial Approach
2013
The colonizer and the colonized are the terms which later came to be used to refer respectively to the oppressor and the oppressed. But in reality, ruler, oppressor and colonizer are just the different nomenclatures which refer to the same human tendency that leads one to exploit the others. Literature being the mirror of the society in which it is created, throws ample light on the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. In American society, African Americans have been the constant source of exploitation for the Whites. Consequently, African American literature overflows with incidents of oppression and the reactions of their writers against such oppression. That is why this paper aims to analyze Richard Wright's 'Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth' and bring out the complexities in the relationship between the Whites and the Blacks and its effects on the victim. Richard Wright's 'Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth' (1945) is one of the bestseller autobiographies ever written by African American writer. It narrates the life experiences of Richard, a Black boy, whose 'self' is engulfed by detrimental socio-political institutions of his time. These institutions were so menacing that it was almost impossible for his 'self' to have any positive growth. However, Richard was a child with 'difference' who was ever prepared to face any of the challenges of life in order to survive in the hostile circumstances. In fact, it is observed that it is this sense of fighting out the battle up to its end enabled him to develop his personality in the right direction and reach to the pre-planned destination of his life-journey. A close analysis of 'Black Boy' shows that the conflict for survival of the 'self' of the narrator begins from his family itself. It's very early in his life-story that the readers come to know that Richard's father had deserted his family and was living with another woman. In fact, his father "…was a shiftless farmhand, a slave in mind if not in body, with no vestige of loyalty towards his wife or family."(Weeks, 1945: 131) Consequently, Richard was forced to suffer the pangs of a broken family. In normal circumstances, it is expected that the parents should take proper care of their children and help them to grow as a normal human being. However, Richard could not get this normal treatment at the hands of his family members. Of course, his mother tried to perform her duties towards her son as sincerely as possible, yet her ill-health compelled her to surrender in front of the adverse circumstances. It is seen that her ill-health, particularly the days when she was bedridden due to a stroke of paralysis, had very adverse effect on the tender and receptive mind of little Richard. In this connection he writes: "(her) sufferings grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness,… a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me self conscious, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me." (Wright, 1945: 87) However, it has to be taken into consideration that it was because of his mother that Richard could learn many skills which were indispensable to keep his self intact in the racial circumstances of his life. It was his mother who made him fit to survive in his antagonistic surrounding by forcing him fight with other Black boys in the street and at the same time keeping him away from the Whites as any confrontation with this powerful enemy was dangerous for his own survival. Though she was deserted by her husband, she taught Richard to read and write which changed the entire course of his future life. But it is also true that his mother was responsible for many of the fears which bore in his mind and heart. Once, accidentally, he put the house on fire that resulted in his severe beating at the hands of his mother. The fear of this beating was so intense that: "Whenever I tried to sleep I would see huge wobbly white bags, like the full udders of cows, suspended from the ceiling above me. …I was gripped by the fear that they were going to fall and drench me with some horrible liquid…
THE USE OF LANGUAGE IN THE EXPRESSION OF RACISM IN RICHARD WRIGHT'S BLACK BOY
ABSTRACT The main purpose of this study is to reveal The Use of Language in the Expression of Racism in Richard Wright’s Black Boy. The first chapter contains an introduction, background of the study, statement of research problem, research question, and objectives of the study, significance, scope and limitation. The second chapter has introduction, literature review, Use of Language in the Expression of Racism, Racism in the English Language, Black American’s Concept of Identity, Struggle for Cultural Identity and Self Image, Related Slaves Narratives as Racial and Oppression Evidences, Richard Wright: "Using Words as a Weapon, Wright’s Attitude towards the White and Black Worlds while the third chapter, consist of Poverty and Hunger, Dehumanization, Social Insecurity, Disharmony, Rejection and Ejection, Physical and Sexual Assault, Reaction of the Characters to Racism and Oppression, and the last chapter contains conclusion, summary and recommendations.
The Question of Identity in Diran Adebayo's "Some Kind of Black
2010
"Some Kind of Black" is Adebayo's first published novel, a multi-award winning work widely acclaimed by critics, a book which established its author as one of the most original literary talents on the London scene. The book is a nineties' coming of age story which traces a difficult year in the life of the protagonist. Like most novels written by authors who come from countries of the formerly colonized space the book can be read and interpreted in two ways. This paper looks at the universal character of the story and tries to emphasize the way in which the protagonist's identity is constructed as he unwarily embarks on a journey of self-discovery.