Racism, Violence, and Hunger in Richard Wright's Fiction

Introduction

This paper introduces and discusses some of Richard Wright's major social themes — most prominently racism — as they appear in his work. Specifically, it examines Black Boy and Native Son, two of his most celebrated and enduring works.

Richard Wright: Life and Context

Richard Wright was born in Mississippi in 1908 and died in 1960. During his relatively brief lifetime, he completed several novels and books of poetry, all dealing with Black issues and ideas. Two of his most famous works are Black Boy and Native Son, which this paper will discuss.

While Wright may not have faced many of the problems his slave grandparents did, he still encountered many hurdles before America accepted him as a writer. "Wright nevertheless was faced with daunting barriers to literary achievement: racism, poverty, family problems, religion, and a modest formal education" (Felgar 1).

Wright lived for a time in Chicago, where he set Native Son, and when he died in 1960 he was living in Paris. He worked for a time as a postal worker before he began writing in the 1930s. His work was acclaimed, yet he continued to encounter racism in the United States, which is why he moved his family to France (Hancuff).

Themes in Wright's Work

Many common themes fill Wright's works. Native Son was not his first book. It was first published in 1940 and later released in an "uncensored" edition in 1993. Critics acclaimed it at the time, but many also ridiculed and censored it, dismissing him as nothing more than a "protest writer." Nevertheless, "sixty years after its first publication, Native Son remains Richard Wright's most powerful and most frequently discussed novel" (Felgar 43).

Black Boy was first published in 1945, and an "uncensored" edition with additional material appeared in 1991. It is the life story of Wright, but it reads more like a novel than an autobiography, mainly because "Wright sometimes alters historical facts to suit his thematic concerns" (Felgar 61).

Racism as a Central Theme

One theme that appears consistently is white racism. Wright's characters are usually the victims of racism, and he argues that racism is the cause of many of the problems Black America faced at the time. In Native Son, he portrays whites as failing to understand Black people any more than Black people understand whites, and even though some characters may not admit it, they are afraid of one another. "Wright argues: if the whites in Native Son had recognized that Bigger is a human being rather than a stereotyped figment of their imaginations, he would not have become a killer" (Felgar 43).

The sharp contrast between Mr. Dalton — the wealthy landowner who effectively keeps Bigger's family confined to a Black slum — and Bigger's family, who live in poverty with no way out, is also a commentary on the social divide between Black and white Americans. It reinforces the theme of white racism and lack of understanding. Mr. Dalton "supports" Black people by contributing money to the NAACP and hiring a Black chauffeur, yet Bigger does not even know what the NAACP is. All of this helps build and underline Wright's central theme. "To Wright, whites fail to see blacks as human beings; if they did, there would be no Bigger Thomases" (Felgar 54).

In Black Boy, race is equally central. Wright recalls that as a boy he was not allowed to check out library books, and he had to "forge notes in order to request volumes supposedly for the use of one of his fellow employees" (Fabre vii). The reader is consistently reminded of the hardships he faced because of his color, including poverty, hunger, and lack of formal education.

Wright does not believe that people are fundamentally different because of skin color. His grandmother could have passed for white, yet she lived in the Black community, giving Wright firsthand experience with the color line within his own family. "He never saw any evidence that race was a legitimate source of authority, but he was excluded by a society that assumed unthinkingly that it was" (Felgar and Johnson 4).

Conclusion

When it was first published, Wright's work filled a gap in American literature. As one critic observed, "there hadn't been anything in African-American literature to match the power of the slave narratives, it seemed, until Richard Wright published his collection of four long stories about racial violence in the South, Uncle Tom's Children (1938)" (Pinckney). Although many of his themes were difficult or uncomfortable to read, his work is still studied today for its power and emotional intensity. Wright's short life produced some of the most penetrating studies of African American life that any reader can encounter.