Richard Wright: The Best Writer Richard Wright

¶ … Richard Wright: The Best Writer

Richard Wright is my selection for best writer among host of other black writers during and fate the Harlem Renaissance. The reason I regard Richard Wright as the best among such black intellectuals as Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Lionel Trilling is the fact that he was more politically aware of the situation of black people than most of his contemporaries. With his writings, he tried to establish a black identity that was most original in nature. It was not based on borrowed concepts or views and originated from a young educated and trained mind. In a short period of time and a relatively brief lifetime (1908-1960), he graduated from being the grandson of slave grandparents in rural Mississippi to an international renowned writer in 1940s and 1950s. He preached personal freedom for everyone including the black community. Wright was of the view that no matter what society proposes in terms of control and regulation, the truth he felt was that man could expand his wings and achieve anything he wanted in a society that promoted personal freedom.

The book that we chose to study for this paper is the Black Boy, Wright's autobiography that shows how a young black boy beat all odds against him to become of the pre-eminent writer of 20th century. Black Boy is unarguably one of the most powerful writings of the 20th century and one that had a profound impact on black community's civil rights movement. While it would be wrong to say that Wright had an unfortunate childhood, it is still true that he grew up in times of severe segregation and racism. In a society plagued by racist hatred and intense social division, Wright managed to gain influence and power through his writers and in the process triggered social revolt.

'Wright's purposes in writing the book were threefold. He was first concerned with describing his own intellectual and emotional growth -- and explaining how it was that he did not fall into the stereotyped pattern of the behavioral responses of the southern Negro community. He was also interested in showing how the caste system literally blights the lives of the Negro minority. And finally, he wanted to indicate how the system of race relations in the South brutalizes and dehumanizes the lives of the white ruling class." (Margolies: p. 17)

In the book, Wright explained that revolt against whiteness or a white society was always a personal rebellion for him. While we might not agree with his views, it is clear that Wright for as effective solo as others were in groups. The author opted for an individualistic approach to racism. It is because of this that some accused him of being self-centered such as West who wrote: "Wright tried to create an Afro-American self-image that rests solely upon personal revolt ... His revolt was intense, but it never crystallized into any serious talk of concerted action partly because such talk presupposes a community, a set of common values and goals, at which a marginal man like Wright can only sneer." (p. 136). But Wright was certainly not egotistical in his approach to racism, he only believed that he could exert more influence and power alone than as part of a group. This is true that group identity often suppresses individual identity. The fact that Wright was a private person for whom defeating racism became a personal revolt is evident from an early age. In the Black Boy, he wrote:

"At the age of twelve, before I had had one full year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering." (Pg. 100)

Some of the dominant themes in the Black Boy include defiance of established authority, curiosity, violence, hunger, social control etc. On one important occasion in the novel, Wright as a child set his grandfather's house on fire. The incidental may have involved violence and subsequent punishment, but it clearly showed his desire to challenge authority. These events forced the author to think about social control and how the authority would impose it. Wright realized that violence and not argument was authority's main weapon against revolt.

'The violence in Black Boy, whether physical or otherwise, is extremely important, because it is what authority tends to rely on instead of argument. As Wright believed that arguments must succeed based on their own merits rather than on appeals to authority or violence, the reader can easily determine what Wright thinks of a world that is so quick to rely on force to meet challenges to it." (Felgar: 2)

The author experienced some truly violent and painful phases in his childhood and later as an adult that helped shape his sense of self-reliance. He recalls one important incident in which he was beaten by some white guys in the streets. Wright sought refuge in his mother's arms but she turned him away and forced him to fight for himself.

"Take this money, this note, and this stick," she said. "Go to the store and buy those groceries. If those boys bother you, then fight." I was baffled. My mother was telling me to fight a thing that she had never done before. "But, I'm scared," I said. "Don't you come into this house until you've gotten those groceries," she said.