Black_Boy_Group_1

=Black Boy Group 1 ANTHONY ALEC COLLEEN AND RYAN =

** Author Background Information: ** Richard’s grandmother, a devout Seventh Day Adventist, enrolled him in a Seventh Day Adventist school near Jackson at the age of twelve. He also attended a local public school for a few years. In the spring of 1924 the //Southern Register//, a local black newspaper, printed his first story, “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half Acre.” From 1925 to 1927, he worked several menial jobs in Jackson and Memphis. During this time he continued writing and discovered the works of H.L. Mencken, Theodore Dreiser, and Sinclair Lewis. In 1927 he moved to Chicago, where he became a Post Office clerk until the Great Depression forced him to take on various temporary positions. During this time he became involved with the Communist Party, writing articles and stories for both the //Daily Worker// and //New Masses//. In April 1931 he published his first major story, “Superstition,” in //Abbot’s Monthly//. His ties to the Communist Party continued after moving to New York in 1937. He became the Harlem editor of the //Daily Worker// and helped edit a short-lived literary magazine, //New Challenge//. In 1938 four of his stories were collected as //Uncle Tom’s Children//. He then received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to complete his first novel, //Native Son// (1940). In 1939, he married Dhimah Rose Meadman, a white dancer, but the two separated shortly thereafter. In 1941, he married Ellen Poplar, a white member of the Communist Party, and they had two daughters, Julia in 1942 and Rachel in 1949. In 1944 he broke with the Communist Party but continued to follow liberal ideologies. After moving to Paris in 1946, Wright became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus while going through an Existentialist phase best depicted by his second novel, //The Outsiders// (1953). In 1954 he published a minor novel, //Savage Holiday//. After becoming a French citizen in 1947, he continued to travel throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, and these experiences led to a number of nonfiction works. In his last years, he was plagued by illness (aerobic dysentary) and financial hardship. Throughout this period he wrote approximately 4,000 English Haikus (some of which were recently published for the first time) and another novel, //The Long Dream//, in 1958. He also prepared another collection of short stories, //Eight Men//, which was published after his death on November 28, 1960. Among his other works are two autobiographies. //Black Boy//, published in 1945, covered his youth in the segregated South, and //American Hunger//, published posthumously in 1977, treated his membership and disillusionment with the Communist Party. Many of Wright’s works failed to satisfy the rigid standards of the New Criticism, but his evolution as a writer has interested readers throughout the world. The importance of his works comes not from his technique and style, but from the impact his ideas and attitudes have had on American life. Wright is seen as a seminal figure in the black revolution that followed his earliest novels. Bigger Thomas, the central figure of //Native Son//, is a murderer, but his situation galvanized the thought of black leaders toward the desire to confront the world and help shape the future of their race. As his vision of the world extended beyond the U.S., his quest for solutions expanded to include the politics and economics of emerging third world nations. Wright’s development was marked by an ability to respond to the currents of the social and intellectual history of his time. His most significant contribution, however, was his desire to accurately portray blacks to white readers, thereby destroying the white myth of the patient, humorous, subservient black man. ||
 * One of America’s greatest black writers, Richard Wright was also among the first African American writers to achieve literary fame and fortune, but his reputation has less to do with the color of his skin than with the superb quality of his work. He was born and spent the first years of his life on a plantation, not far from the affluent city of Natchez on the Mississippi River, but his life as the son of an illiterate sharecropper was far from affluent. Though he spent only a few years of his life in Mississippi, those years would play a key role in his two most important works: //Native Son//, a novel, and his autobiography, //Black Boy//. ||
 * Richard Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, on September 4, 1908. His father, Nathaniel, was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother, Ella Wilson, was a well-educated school teacher. The family’s extreme poverty forced them to move to Memphis when Richard was six years old. Soon after, his father left the family for another woman and his mother was forced to work as a cook in order to support the family. Richard briefly stayed in an orphanage during this period as well. His mother became ill while living in Memphis, so the family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, and lived with Ella’s mother.

** Time Period Information: ** <span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif"><span style="FONT-FAMILY: Tahoma, Geneva, sans-serif">** Plot: ** The book begins with a mischievous, four-year-old Wright setting fire to his house, and continues in that vein. Wright is a curious child living in a <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">household of strict, religious women and violent, irresponsible men. He quickly chafes against his surroundings, reading instead of playing with other children, and rejecting the church in favor of atheism at a young age. He feels even more out of place as he grows older and comes in contact with the rampant racism of the 1920's south. Not only does he find it generally unjust, but he is especially bothered by whites' (and other blacks') desire to squash his intellectual curiosity and potential. His father deserts the family, and he is shuffled back and forth between his sick mother, his fanatically religious grandmother and various aunts and uncles. As he ventures into the white world to find <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">jofbs, he encounters extreme racism and brutal violence, which stays with him the rest of his life. The family is starving to death. They have always viewed the north as a place of opportunity, and so as soon as they can scrape together enough money, Richard and his aunt go to Chicago, promising to send for his mother and brother. He finds the north less racist than the south, and begins forming <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">concrete ideas about American race relations. He holds many jobs, most of them menial. He washes floors during the day and reads Proust and medical journals by night. His family is still very poor, and his mother is crippled by a stroke, and his relatives continue to annoy him about his atheism and his reading. They don't see the point of it. He <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">finds a job at the post office and meets some white men who share his cynical view of the world, and religion in particular. They invite him to the John Reed Club, an organization that promotes the <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">arts and social change. He becomes involved with a magazine called Left Front. He slowly becomes immersed in the Communist party, organizing its writers and artists. At first he thinks he will <span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none; mso-bidi-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; text-underline: none">find friends within the party, especially among its black members, but he finds them to be just as afraid of change as the southern whites he had left behind. The Communists fear anyone who disagrees with their ideas, and Wright, who has always been inclined to question and speak his mind, is quickly branded a "counter-revolutionary." When he tries to leave the party, he is accused of trying to lead others away from it. After witnessing the trial of another black Communist for counter-revolutionary activity, Wright decides to abandon the party. Still, he remains branded an "enemy" of Communism, and party members threaten him away from various jobs and gatherings. Nevertheless, he does not fight them because he believes they are clumsily groping toward ideas that he agrees with: unity, tolerance, and equality. He ends the book by resolving to use his writing to search for a way to start a revolution: he thinks that everyone has a "hunger" for life that needs to be filled, and for him, politics is his way to the human heart. (Time) 1912 – 1937 (Place) Primarily Jackson, Mississippi; West Helena and Elaine, Arkansas; Memphis, Tennessee; and Chicago, Illinois, with detours to rural areas in the Deep South and to New York City The insidious effects of racism; the individual versus society; the redemptive power of art Richard Wright Richard ’s most essential characteristic is his tremendous belief in his own worth and capabilities. This belief frequently renders him willful, stubborn, and disrespectful of authority, putting him at odds with his family and with those who expect him to accept his degraded position in society. Because almost everyone in Richard’s life thinks this way, he finds himself constantly punished for his nonconformity with varying degrees of physical violence and emotional isolation. Though Richard shows signs of insecurity, inferiority, and shame around some whites, his self-assurance seems largely -invulnerable, and his punishing childhood only serves to convince him of his own right to succeed in the world. Moreover, Richard’s difficult and isolating experiences as a child fuel his intensely powerful imagination, his love of reading and writing, and his will to make his life feel meaningful through writing about his environment. Ella Wright Richard’s contentious relationship with his mother may be traced back to his early childhood, when Ella administers a beating that nearly kills him. This strife continues throughout Richard’s early years, as he commits endless punishable offenses in a setting where his mother is often the only authority figure around to deliver punishment. Despite her sometimes brutal discipline, Ella is devoted to her children and is fiercely determined to raise them successfully after her husband abandons the family. Ella shows a special tolerance and affection for Richard that we do not see in any of the other major characters. When Richard publishes “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” for example, the rest of the family attacks him, but Ella shows compassion through her concern that Richard’s writing might make it hard for him to get a job. Similarly, Ella walks on her weak legs to give Richard a hug when she learns that he will get a job in defiance of Granny ’s and Addie ’s wishes, suggesting that she takes genuine delight in her son’s success. Granny, Addie, Tom, Pease, Reynolds, Olin, Ed Green, Buddy Nealson In the cases of Granny and Addie, strict religious faith drives them to attack Richard at every turn because he fails to act like a good Seventh-Day Adventist. Tom’s belief that young people should unthinkingly obey their elders rouses him to fury whenever Richard takes a justified stand against him. Pease, Reynolds, and Olin believe that black people exist merely for the service and sport of white people, leading them to treat Richard with shocking inhumanity. Finally, Ed Green and Buddy Nealson, who maintain that Communists should quietly march in step with the Party, vilify Richard as soon as he seems to be marching to a different drummer. In short, these characters all deny Richard’s worth as an -individual. The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in //Self-Reliance// that “society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members,” in that the “base doctrine of the majority of voices usurps the place of the doctrine of the soul.” Taken together, these characters represent the multitude of ways in which society “is in conspiracy against” Richard.
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