Black Boy Essay

Hunger is a feeling of discomfort or weakness usually caused by a lack of food, mainly coupled with the desire to eat food. In the memoir Black Boy by Richard Wright, the main character understands that hunger is not only based on the lack of food, but how his is always hungry to learn more. Hunger is a motif that appears constantly throughout the memoir. Effecting and fueling Richard’s hungers to succeed in everything he puts his mind too.

From the age of twelve, Richard knows he is different. Which creates him to be able to develop desires and hungers that he forces himself to fulfill. Before Richers finishes one full year of formal education he is able to expand his understanding and perspective of the world, but specifically the worth of negroes in the south, confined by the Jim Crow Laws. With Richard’s understanding he develops “ an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive…” (112). At the age of twelve he is able to grasp an understanding that separates him from all the negroes of his age, and the majority of the negroes that are older than him. Because Richard’s conception towards life, he is able to see the world “ not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of something that made the look of the world different” (112). Richard understands that he is different, which causes him to feel the effects of isolation and alienation from not only his family, but all the negroes and whites in Jackson, Mississippi. But through isolation and alienation, and being different, hungers arise. Which causes Richard to look at the bigger picture and making his ultimate hunger “going to the north and writing book, novels.” (186). A hunger he must fulfill.

Richard discovers that he has a real hunger for school and writing, which leads him to discover his ultimate desire in life. Richard goes to many different schools from church schools to a regular integrated elementary school. Each he is able to succeed, beyond what the average negro is able to accomplish. At Richard’s integrated elementary school, he was “selected as valedictorian...and assigned to write a paper” (192). But because he is at a school with both blacks and whites, Richard’s principle decides to write the speech, which does not go over well. Resulting in Richard putting his time and effort into a short story, that