Richard Wright's "Black Boy": Chapters 3 and 4

Wright's mother suffers from a stroke and is at the mercy of
her family. While relatives flock to help her in her almost-paralytic state,
the future of her two sons is put to question. Wright's brother is sent to live
with relatives in Detroit. Wright is jealous that is brother gets to go north,
but the family could only afford one boy. Wright in turn is sent to another
Aunt and Uncle who, though poor, offer him a promising future and a steady
education. But when Wright finds out that a boy died in the house, his
irrational but acute fear of ghosts forces him to move in with his grandmother and
Aunt Addie who are caring for his mom. 

In response to his mother's illness, Wright develops and
attitude toward the world that he claims was pervasive through his life,

"A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose
settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, 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 excape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me"
(112).

The fate of his mother led to Wright developing a cynicism
toward life that he was unable to shake. Perhaps he felt that he may also be
destined to suffer a similar fate, that his destiny was linked to her through
blood.

Since Wright moves in with his grandmother he now has to
take heed to her rules and standards. Her Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs cause
friction to Wright's desire to get a job and work on Saturdays. Both his
grandmother and Aunt Addie believe that his soul is in peril and try in
multiple ways to get him to be a better Christian, including sending him to a
religious school where Aunt Addie taught. This serves as a catalyst for
Wright's growing disgust with religion. Not only does he not feel God when he
is in church or when he is praying, the anger and fear used to try to force him
into being saved drive him further from God. 

It is also at this point that Wright makes the resolution to
not be beaten again. Throughout his childhood Wright had been liberally beaten
by his relatives, often for crimes he had no part in. But when his Aunt wraps
his knuckles for a mess he did not make in class, he affirms that he will never
be beat by her again, and takes measures into his own hands. He takes a knife
when his aunt comes at him again, and despite the threats made by both her and
his grandmother, Wright insists that he will not be beaten. And he wins. 

Still, he is forced to go to religious revivals. His family
and friends continue to pressure him and he is further pushed from religion.

In the hour he is supposed to pray before bed, he instead
writes a story. When he completes it, he runs to read it to the young woman
next door. Her response is one of confusion:

"When I finished she smiled at me oddly, her eyes baffled and astonished.

"What's that for?" she asked.

"Nothing," I said.

"But why did you write it?"

"I just wanted to."

"Where did you get the idea?"

"Oh, I don't know. I just thought it up."

"What're you going to do with it?"

"Nothing."

God only knows what she thought. My environment contained
nothing more alien than writing or the desire to express one's self in
writing" (Wright 133).

The book this far establishes two paradoxes that blacks at
the time had to face. 

In terms of Wright's interactions with White thus far, it
appears that he develops his fear of whites through stories and threats. For
young Wright, he barley notices the difference between whites and blacks when
he is out walking in the streets. But hears stories of a white man whipping a
black boy, and when he gets in trouble his mother threatens that the white men
will come get him. Only when Wright's uncle is killed by a group of white men
does the white presence actually have an effect on him personally, but Wright
has still not physically seen for himself whites attacking blacks. 

The fear blacks and resentment blacks have of whites
permeates their culture and is absorbed by the children second-handedly. Wright's
resentment is perpetuated by the culture created by his immediate surroundings
and neighbors who also harbor hatred toward whites. The polarization of whites
and blacks, each with their own irrational but prevalent vendetta against the
other, offers no opportunities for peace talks or reconciliation. 

"We were now large enough for the white boys to fear us
and both of us, the white boys and the black boys, began to play our
traditional racial roles as though we had been born to them, as though it was
in our blood, as though we were being guided by instinct. All the frightful
descriptions we had heard about each other, all the violent expressions of hate
and hostility that had seeped into us from our surroundings, came now to the
surface to guide our actions" (Wright 93).

Lastly, at the very end of chapter four, we see how reaching
out of the status quo was looked down upon. Wrights desire to imagine, write,
and create were unheard of things for a black to aspire for. It was so
ingrained in the mentality of blacks that his neighbor could not fathom what
would possess him to do such an absurd thing as write a story for
entertainment. Wright, unlike many of his peers, had done some traveling around
the southern states, had lived in both urban and rural areas, and he had known
extreme hunger and poverty as well as surplus and gluttony. Wright's
experiences made his perspective on the world more well-rounded and educated.
He was not to be brain-washed into believing just any old religion and he was
acutely aware of his feelings, his opinions, and his the logic to the repercussions
of his actions. 

Though at this point in his life, he is still learning about
the relationship between blacks and whites, it is apparent that he is extremely
bright and headstrong. His inability to completely grasp the reasoning behind segregation
shows that his intelligent mind is trying to formulate the logic for the
separation and inequality, and he is unable to form it. 

This book is turning out to be an educational instrument
aimed at explaining why many southern blacks acted the way they did: because of
the extreme deprivation and repression in all facets of their life including  tradition, education, resources, and
opportunities for travel outside of their small circles.