Richard Wright's Black Boy

Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy, documents his journey as an African-American male living in the south and his introduction to racial segregation. Throughout the novel Wright connects his actions and his dissatisfaction to a hunger he developed as a child. This hunger accompanies Wright throughout his life and extends far beyond the physical pains of malnutrition. Even as a young child, Wright emphasizes his hunger for understanding the world around him and the repercussions this inquisitive nature has on a Negro living in a society dominated by Jim Crowe laws. Wright’s hunger for self-reliance is a stark opposition to the typical Negro life. Furthermore, Wright exposes the unfulfillment that accompanies his need for independence. Wright makes it apparent that the most dominant hunger is his need for knowledge. This knowledge is the driving force behind every action of Wright’s life and the source of his rebellion against society as he attempts to fulfill this hunger. Wright’s hunger was a constant reminder of the unfulfillment that supplements his life in the South. Throughout the novel Wright highlights his battle with finding his place in American society and filling the hunger that consumes his daily life. In Black Boy, Richard Wright uses the unfulfillment that accompanies his hunger to contest the world around him.

From the beginning of Black Boy, Richard Wright focuses on his ongoing battle with hunger. At first depicting his hunger for a lack of food and quickly developing into something much more unfulfilling. Wright proves this empty hunger through his desire to understand the world around him. Wright uses his inquisitive and insistent nature as a force to contest the world around him. Wright does this by putting into question the race relations between blacks and whites, (this was what separated him from his black community because this was not something you did during that time in the south). “I brooded for a long time about the seemingly