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Hunger In Richard Wright's 'Black Boy'

Submitted By
Words 1092
Pages 5
Aayush Sutaria
Mr. V
English 1 Acc
10/20/15
Hunger As Richard Wright, author of the memoir Black Boy, once stated, “Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.” Hunger seemed to be an ever present theme in Richard's life, however Richard expresses more than just physical hunger. Richard posses the hunger for knowledge, understanding of the world and acceptance. Author, Richard Wright, cleverly intertwines these three hungers to create the force that drove and influenced Richard to become the man he was before he met his unfortunate doom. Richard's hunger for knowledge was the single most important obstacle Richard …show more content…
Even as a young boy, Richard's hunger to understand the people and the world around him was prevalent."I wanted to understand these two sets of people who lived side by side and never touched, except in violence"(Wright 47) Richard questioned his parents, teachers and other adults about the racial inequalities that existed in the world that he lived in, but he is never given an answer. Instead, he is condemned for his actions. Due circumstances, Richard vowed to find the answers to his questions. He wanted to know: "What was it that made the hate of whites for blacks so steady, seemingly so woven into the texture of things? What kind of life was possible under that hate? How had this hate come to be?"(Wright 164). Richard believed the answers to his questions lied in the north, and so he decided his ultimate goal was to reach the North. He told himself "...that there were good white people, people with money and sensitive feelings."(Wright 148). He also wrote, “The North symbolized to me all that I had not felt and seen; it had no relation whatever to what actually existed. Yet, by imagining a place where everything was possible, I kept hope alive in me” (Wright 168). This quote goes to show Richard believed he would find his answers once and for all if he were to move up north. Richard's inability to recognize the racial differences that existed between whites and blacks was one of the key reasons he did not fit in with his

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