Can one just imagine the pain and suffering a young poor African American
boy in the 1920s had to go through? No one can. Just because the color of ones
skin is different does not mean that their different on the in side. The book Black
Boy by Richard Wright („ 1937) is about him self, like an autobiography. It is
about all the troubles he went through as a young boy, and all the pain he had to
face being of a different color. The book takes place it the 1920s-1930s era, and
in different areas of the South. As a young boy, Richard was always curious of
the world around him and he always got in trouble. One day Richard¡s dad leaves
him, his brother, and his mom 'cause he got fed up with them. So Richard¡s mom
thought it would be best for them to move in with their grandmother. Throughout
the time period Richard discovers alcohol and gets in to fights, but he starts to go
to school. He wants to be educated and to do some thing with his life, and not
accept his expected roll in life. Richard¡s expected roll in life is to be a nothing, a
nobody and to never succeed in any thing.
One of societies expectations for Richard is to be a nothing, a nobody. All of
Richard¡s childhood, he was always let down and discouraged. ¡§...I use to mull
over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how unstable was our
tenderness, how lacking in genuine passion we were, how void of great hope,
how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how lacking we were in those
intangible sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow was even our
despair...¡ (45) This explains how the way of society has got Richard feeling
down, and how empty his world felt to him. He always felt like there was
something missing, or he was out of place. But with being a nothing there is no
To never succeed in anything is an easy accomplis
...