Violence In Richard Wright's Black Boy

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In our current society, Silence can be a kind of meditation, literature can be a way to broadcast ideas, and violence is (to many) the strongest way to communicate with others. However, In Black Boy, Richard flips the roles of silence, literature and violence. Silence becomes the best way to communicate with others, literature becomes meditation or medicine, and violence is a weaker, less direct way to share your feelings.
The magnetic pull of literature and language throughout Black Boy has a certain medicinal power to it, able to pacify Richard’s deeply scarred personality, and push to the side negative emotions to make room for a deeper exploration of reality. Before experiencing books, Richard simply could not feel the normal emotions that his peers did, …show more content…
fists, physical violence) in the book and its relation to words. Physical violence is really only a “filler” throughout Black Boy, meant as a substitute for language, to exist where words are too obvious and strong for the specific situation. However, aggression seems like the main method of communication for those surrounding Richard. His mother even taught him how to fight at the age of four: “You just stay right where you are...I’m going to teach you this night to stand up and fight for yourself”, she says (17). In a world where black people are belittled and treated like children, Richard’s mother finds it necessary to fill in the gap for language--which is usually thought of as a more sophisticated means of communicating--with childlike violence. The idea of physical violence isn’t only reinforced at home, it’s used as a surrogate for words: “For a moment {Aunt Addie} hesitated, then she struck at me with the switch. She was upon me, lashing me across the face” (108). Too upset and closed-minded to listen to Richard, she resorts to violence, the ‘easier’ way of communicating strong

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