"Black Boy" by Richard Wright Chapters 1 and 2

My First Experience with Wright

I picked up, "Black Boy," at a used book store near school this winter. The author struck me as familiar and even though I couldn't put my finger on where I had heard his name, I bought the book anyway. It wasn't until I finally started reading it that I realized Richard Wright also wrote, "Native Son," a book I greatly enjoyed in high school.

"Native Son," had a resounding effect on me because it was the first book that forced me to look at criminals and question the motives for their crimes. "Native Son," describes the inevitable failure that a black adolescence endures in a country that remains mentally segregated, if no longer physically segregated.  In it, the black protagonist accidentally kills a white girl. Instead of coming forward and confessing the truth, he scrambles to cover the crime up, resulting in a gruesome cremation. The protagonist knows that, because of his color, he would not be given a fair trial, that the jury would be sure he was guilty despite his honest testimony, and that he would spend the rest of his life in jail because he was black. 

The circumstances surrounding the crime and the aftermath all revolve around the fact that the narrator is deeply scared. All of his actions are done in an attempt to not piss off white people.  The anxiety that this young adult experiences on a daily basis, even before the crime, helped me grow to realize that not all criminals are inherently bad and that the environment and mentality surrounding a childhood can have a devastating effect on how people live their adult life. It is because of "Native Son," that I try to be more sympathetic and understanding toward people who have acted rashly and who have committed crimes. 

Chapters One and Two

This autobiography is a detailed description of a childhood spent in the Jim Crow south. The repeated and unremorseful injustices served to Wright's family members force him to develop deeply-seeded defense mechanisms. The young Wright must be aggressive and violent if he is to bring home groceries unmolested. He must spend his time in saloons drinking for the entertainment of adults if he is to get money to feed himself since his mother's job does not provide an adequate pay. He must be wary of white men to ensure he will not be murdered like his uncle. When he is older, he must join a gang that is resentful of white men if he is to have friends and a family that will help him in times of need. 

Wright lives with his mother and younger brother. Being abandoned by his father, Wright's mother must work long, hard hours and cannot supervise the toilings of her children. Though Wright gets into a lot of trouble (one of said troubles develops into a drinking problem at the ripe age of 6), he learns many life lessons on the streets. He learns how to count from a stranger, he learns the necessity of violence and fighting to bring food home to the family and to get initiated into social circles, and he soon learns the magic and the power of reading.

Because of Wright's precarious financial situation, his mother is forced to put him and his brother in an orphanage for a time. She later takes them out and has them move further South to live with their white-looking, pious, ex-slave grandmother. Through his adverse upbringing and meandering travels, 

Wright develops a keen sense of pride at a young age. Though his stomach has become acquainted with the lurches of hunger, he refuses to beg to his father for more money for food. After this episode, Wright does not see his father for a quarter century. When he sees him again, he realizes that most blacks are deprived of so much more than equal rights. 

"From the white landowners above him there had not been handed to him a chance to learn the meaning of loyalty, of sentiment, of tradition" (Wright 43).