NON-AFRICAN PROSE RICHARD WRIGHT: Black boy
What does Wright’s childhood experiences with his family reveal about him?
Explanation
Black Boy by Richard Wright.
Wright's childhood experiences with his family in Memphis are traumatic and reveal a lot about his character develop-ment.
At an early age of four, he is already giving indications of a restless, inquisitive Soul. He sets his room ablaze, deliberately, wishing to explore its outcome, in spite of his younger brother's warning. His subsequent severe punishment does little to quench his appetite for adventure.
It is this quest for adventure that leads to yet another experience. This time his father has asked that a kitten that is a nuisance be gotten rid of. Richard undertakes to deal with the cat by hanging it on a rope. This cruel act is meant to punish his father whom the hates, but his mother does not support it. He is made to remove the dead kitten hanging on the tree and bury it, as his mother forces him to say a prayer after her.
There is yet another childhood experience borne out of hunger. According to him: "Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow .... But now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, starring at me gauntly." It is gnawing hunger and his mother's confession of helplessness that makes him realize how important his run-away father has been: "I had been glad that he was not there to shout his restrictions at me. But it had never occurred to me that his absence would mean that there would be no food". This experience awakens in him the reality of deprivation.
Richard learns a lesson from another experience, after his mother gets a job as a cook and advises her children to "learn as soon as possible to take care of ourselves" (themselves). He is sent to do the shopping and he is robbed by a gang of boys. He returns to his mother who sends him out again with instruction that he fight the gang or never return home. Richard's ability to stand up to the gang constitutes a psychological development. From that time on, he's ready to strike out on his own: "that night I won the right to the streets of Memphis".
As it turns out later the right extends also to the streets of New York City into a mature awareness of racism and Negro rights.