The Oppression in the 1900's (Black Boy)
Everybody, once or more times in his or her life has been oppressed by others or themselves. Such is the case of Richard Wright in Black Boy, his autobiography. He was born in 1918 at the time of segregation and discrimination. The setting of this novel is in the deep south of Jackson, Mississippi where blacks are abused by whites. The time is 1912, two years before World War I. The mood of the novel is dramatic. Richard Wright is the protagonist. The antagonists are the people who oppress him. Some of them are his own family members. The minor characters are the people he meets when he moves to Memphis. Through other people he realizes the injustice of Jim Crow laws. The conflict happens Richard fight against oppressions from others. The climax of the novel takes place when he wants to learn and gains more knowledge by reading more books, but he is afraid that the white people will find out about it. As a result, he hides the books under the newspapers when he goes to work so people will not see it. The resolution occurs when he decides to tell his boss that he will move to Chicago. Richard Wright's character is affected in early childhood by the effects of societal oppression as well a
The first time that Richard faces societal oppression is when he and his mother visit Granny in Arkansas. This is how he describes it. "...for the first time I noticed that there were two lines of people at the ticket window, a 'white' line and a 'black' line. During my visit at Granny's a sense of the two races had been born in me with a sharp concreteness that would never die until I died...I was aware that we Negroes were in one part of the train and that the whites were in another" (55). This passage shows how he feels about the segregation for the first time he sees it. Even though his mother has never told him about the hostility between blacks and whites, he finds out through the older boys in the gang. During a conversation with them, he heard one of the boys says, In spite of all the oppressions that Richard Wright received over the years, he still can be a successful writer. One of the themes in this novel Richard Wright tries to prove is the cycle of oppression. People oppress others because they have been internalized oppressed by another person. Because they have been oppressed, they want to do the same thing to others. In the same way, whites deliver the same hate to blacks that they themselves receive from society. To Richard, this is a result of naturalism, which means that everybody's behavior is shaped by the society around him or her. It is not their fault, but the environment they grow up in. Ever since Richard is little, people around him and especially his own family has beaten him for things he did not do. He is internally oppressed by them. They make him think that it is right to beat him. One time, when Richard is going to be beaten for throwing walnuts on the floor in the classroom even though he did not, he thinks to himself, "I had often been painfully beaten, but almost always I had felt that the beatings were somehow right and sensible, that I was in the wrong" (118). At that moment, Richard thinks that he deserves to be beaten. Another time when Richard's Grandpa passed away, his Granny tells him to give the news to Uncle Tom who lives two miles away fr
Some common words found in the essay are:
Uncle Tom, Richard Wright, Granny Arkansas, Ku Kluxers, Jim Crow, Aunt Maggie, Richard Wright's, Klux Klan, Black Boy, , richard wright, uncle tom, societal oppression, reading books, passage richard, matter people, rebellious richard, own family, sixth grade, people oppress,
Approximate Word count = 1430
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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