Richard Wright is known to be a genius inspirator to many writers because of his style of writing and deep philosophy on how the world acts upon african americans. Being an african american, Richard Wright had to do whatever he could to pursue his gift and passion of speaking and writing. Richard Wright’s early life is made through sheer struggle and how he achieved and conquered those struggles to make something of himself. Richard Wright was born on September 4th, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi.
He was the grandson of slaves and son of a sharecropper. ““Richard Wright” Wright’s father left him and his mother when he was five. It became much more difficult for his mother to take care of Wright alone and therefore began his struggle with his life. Wright was schooled in Jackson, Mississippi where Wright was only able to acquire a ninth grade level education, however, Wright had a gift; A gift with words and by the age of sixteen, one of his short stories was published in the newspapers thus began his life in literature.
Memphis prohibited the use of public libraries, so Wright had to do what he could to pursue his interest in literature. Wright forged notes so that he could take out books on a white man’s library card. “Richard Wright” Wright wasn’t getting anywhere far from his minor success in publishment in the newspapers and one day told a friend of his “I want my life to count for something”, and in 1927 finally left the south and moved to Chicago. Richard Wright’s career had been built on a foundation of struggle and experience.
Wright hadn’t gone far in education for in Jackson, Mississippi; A ninth grade education was the highest Wright had gone to achieve because he dropped out to go work when he was sixteen. The jobs that Richard Wright took on in his early years were considerably odd for the conditions that he was in. He had been a dishwasher and delivery boy in Memphis. “Richard Wright’s Life” Wright’s career had sparked when his short story collection “Uncle Tom’s Children” won first place in a story magazine for best-length manuscript.
Wright declared in “How Bigger Was Born” that he needed to write a book that bankers’ daughters would not be able to “read and feel good about,” that would “be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears” (On Richard Wright’s Poetry) Wright’s novel “Native Son” made Wright the most respected and wealthiest black writer in America making it his second best writing aside from “Uncle Tom’s Children” Wright had achieved his dream to make his life count. Richard Wright’s Life) Richard Wright’s style of writing has his personal style of violence and a hidden purpose of expressing the point of view of a black man in ways to confirm the white man’s worst fears. Wright is also a known meticulous journal keeper. All of Wright’s journal entries uncover a deeply personal side of his life kept hidden from the public until his death.
This proof of his captive inner personal side also reveals the meaning behind the poetries by Wright, such as “I Have Seen black Hands” and “Between The World and Me” (Richard Wright Reader (Book Review))” Wright’s poem “I Have Seen black Hands” reveals his power to express the explicitly revolutionary radicalism of the African American lives. In his poem “Between The World and Me” Wright talks of lynching in the deep south.
The description and point of view of that of a black man expresses the the violence Wright has come to grow on because of the White man fears. The poem supports Wright’s stories of Uncle Tom’s Children that would inform the violentness and indifferent torture to the political protest, as would Native Son later on. (On Richard Wright’s Poetry) The poem “Between The World and Me” by Richard Wright is a poem about a man stumbling upon a thing, a fallen body.
A fallen body of bones lying upon ashes, broken tree limbs left over of the hanging of a man, an empty shoe, bodiless, and ripped apart, a countless number of leftover used matches, and the leftover of tar probably used to torture the body through tar and feathering. As the lines indicate “There was a design of white bones slumbering forgottenly upon a cushion a cushion of ashes. A vacant shoe, an empty tie, a ripped shirt, a lonely hat, and a pair of trousers stiff with black blood. (4-7)
A lynching is upon the wandering man’s eyes only to see that the ones who did so still reside at the location of the found fallen body. Probably a gang of bandits for the found “Butt-ends of cigars and cigarettes, peanut shells, a drained ginflask, and a whores lipstick” at the site. (16) The poem then goes on about the wandering man being discovered by the gang and talks of another lynching swirling from mouth to mouth by the bandits.
The wandering man is now in the process of being lynched. …. My skin clung to the bubbling hot tar, falling from me in limp patches. And the down and quills of the white feathers sank into my raw flesh, and I moaned in agony. Then my body was cooled off mercifully by a baptism of gasoline. ” (20-22) The Violent style that Richard Wright has on a majority of his poems allow his style of writing to express graphically the ways of how men were treated in the world whether it was in justice or not, or whether legal or not.
I can interpret that Richard Wright may have come to this thought when he was moving to Chicago. The experience may not have been the same, but the thought of how he may have been treated at first for his skin color is a possibility. Wright’s view of the world then was his main influence. The views of the african american lives he saw mistreated gave him the influence he needed to make his life count. His novel Native Son is widely supported by his short stories in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and “Between The World and Me”, and even “Black Boy”
