Richard Wright's Influence On Society

Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy is an autobiography that depicts the life of a black male growing up in the early 20th century. One of the biggest factors contributing to the man Wright became were influences by society. Society played a huge role in developing Wright as an author and as a person. Examples of these societal factors include: race, educational opportunities, gang and ghetto life, and the attraction of Paris to African American writers of the 20th century. These collective bearings helped shape Richard Wright into one of the most influential African American writers of all time. Just as it is today, where one resides has an enormous impact on educational opportunities. Because a predominantly large
number of African American families live in poor areas, their children attend underfunded schools. In the novel Wright’s poor economic status limited his and many other black’s educational opportunities. Still, Wright understood the value of education: “schooling was more important than the knowledge of a particular subject”(Vogel). When poverty over ruled schooling and Richard could not attend for periods of time, he would teach himself. “I went to school, feeling that my life depended not so much upon learning as upon getting into another world of people” (Wright). Wright grew up in a segregated portion of the south in Jackson Mississippi.
He also grew up in a poor and poverty struck community that meant he had a slim chance of getting out. Growing up in a ghetto is very difficult because of the high rate of unemployment, violence, and crime. In these ghettos high rates of poverty lead to low rates of steady employable males which in turn lead to high rates of single parent households. “Single-parent households lead to lower levels of social control and supervision”(Williams and Collins). Thus, resulting in children of these households becoming more encouraged to violence. Not only did Wright have to deal with violence within his community but also inside his own home. Wright spent a good portion of his childhood avoiding beating and whippings from his family. “One of the climactic scenes of the book, however, serves to set the violence of Black Boy in perspective”(Demarest). During Wright’s last job in the south, Wright’s employers scheme to have him and another black worker fight. Richard and the other boy do not want to fight but once they are harassed and provoked enough by the white employers they find themselves fighting for real. “Harrison and I found it difficult to look at each other; we were upset and distrustful. We were not really angry at each other; we knew that the idea of murder had been planted in each of us by the white men who employed
us”(Wright). The last factor that formed Richard Wright into a successful author was his exile to Paris. After Wright had his dealings with the communist party in the United States, Wright felt that his time in the U.S. was over and that he must leave. Paris was a very attractive place for African Americans to go because the French had no segregation and treated blacks as equals. “During Wright’s first stay in France he was deeply moved by his warm reception by the French literary community and like many other American intellectuals in Paris, was impressed by the respect accorded a writer by the population at large”(Cobb). Richard decided to move there and start a family in Paris. While in Paris, Wright was able to write on topics of his choice and could raise a family in a race free environment. After moving there in 1947, Wright never saw the United States again. Black Boy by Richard Wright is similar to Ralph Ellison’s famous story Battle Royal. In the story a young man was given the opportunity to read his graduation speech in front of the entire town. The narrator is very excited and cannot wait to deliver his speech. When it is his turn to deliver his speech, he finds that the town had different plans for him and his classmates. The narrator, along with his other black classmates, are blindfolded and are forced to fight one another in front of the town. The narrator then wakes up from the nightmare. Both of these stories are considered coming of age stories in which both narrators go through one or several experiences that change their view on the world. For Ellison, it is the battle in which takes place in his story. For Wright it is among many experiences such as, his relationship with his family, the few and meaningless jobs available to black men in the south, and his re-location to Paris. An obvious similarity that these two stories share is racial difficulties. In Battle Royal the boys are forced to look at the naked white girl as a symbol for America meaning something that these black boys will never have. There are many examples of racial tension in Black Boy including several scenes where Wright is forced to fight because of his skin color. The last relationship the two stories share is the struggle for understanding. In Battle Royal, the narrator does not understand why these white men are making them fight against each other and fight for fake money. Richard Wright, in the beginning of the novel, does not understand what and or why racial tension exists, and spends most of his childhood trying to apprehend.