Native Son By Right Essays - Guggenheim Fellows, Existentialists

Native Son By Right The Childhood, Education and Achievements of Richard Wright Richard Wright was the son of an illiterate sharecropper. He was brought up in a dysfunctional home where he suffered poverty and abandonment. He became an essential figure in the development of African American literature, and has been called one of the most powerful writers of the twentieth century. Although Richard Wright experienced a poverty-stricken childhood, he managed to gain a partial education and finally, achieved recognition as a great protest writer. Richard Wright suffered a poverty-stricken childhood. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father worked as a sharecropper until Wright was three, when the family moved to Memphis, Tennessee. Wright and his younger brother hungered for affection, understanding, and attention, as well as for food. They would comb their neighborhood begging for food and money to help his family survive. Wright was also forced to steal in order to eat. Critics say that Wright's behavior was as a result of his father's abandonment. At the age of five or six, Richard's father deserted the family, making them victims of extreme poverty. Soon after, his mother suffered paralytic strokes that left her dependant on her own mother. She was forced to put Richard and his brother into an orphanage. After being sexually molested in the orphanage, Richard ran away but he eventually had to return until his mother returned for them. His mother's illness added more stress to his tumultuous childhood because he was forced to discontinue his education at a premature age and work to help his family survive. Richard worked many odd jobs in places that were unsuitable for a child his age. He worked in saloons, brothels, and even as a scavenger. His jobs in the South were marked by harassment by whites and his own disdain for what segregation and racism had done to his family. He felt that his family was forced to accept poverty. He resolved to migrate to the North, to Chicago in 1927 at the age of nineteen and found a job as a postal clerk. This was his third move in nineteen years (Wertham 321-325). He went to live at his uncle's house and it was there that he had his first encounter with racial hatred and violence. He witnessed the murder of his uncle by a group of white men trying to seize his property. Fearing for their lives, they had no choice but to move again. Richard was sent to his grandmother's home in Jackson at the age of eight. His grandmother was a devout Seventh Day Adventist and a stern disciplinarian who according to Arnold Rampersad, tried to crush Wright's childhood interest in the world of imagination. Eventually, Richard left his grandmother's home and continued shuttling between relatives (Rampersad 11). Richard was unable to complete his education. It is very uncharacteristic for someone with such little formal education to become such a renowned writer, but Richard Wright was an exception to the rule. Despite not finishing high school, Richard decided that he would educate himself. He would go to the library and forge a white person's name in order to get books out. He read constantly in his spare time while he continued to work to help take care of his ailing mother. When Richard's came out of the orphanage, he had to adopt the position as provider and caretaker of his mother and little brother. Richard resented his mother putting him into an orphanage and in his eyes she became an embodiment of passivity and victimization. The only thing that kept Richard happy was the long hours he spent reading the books that he illegally took out of the library. As provider for his family, Richard's responsibilities were overwhelming, and even though he was only a boy he still did what he had to do for his family (Margolies 65-86). According to Richard's classmates at Jackson's Smith-Robertson School, he always had his head in a book. It seems fitting that after he was forced to leave high school, he continued to educate himself. He resolved to migrate to the north, to Chicago in 1927 at the age of nineteen and found a job as a postal clerk. At this period he also became interested in communism and joined the Communist Party. He was also encouraged to write from the Communist Party. He seemed to have inbred literary skills despite of his lack of schooling. Writing became Richard's passion and it was something he still continued to do even after he left the Party