from+Black+Boy

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//From Black Boy// by Richard Wright is about one boy's struggle to get though with little or no food. //From Black Boy// displays a lot of characteristics from modernism especially the characteristic of a feeling of distrust and hopelessness. Richard Wright's background and young life greatly affected his writing. Richard Wright's //Black Boy// has many characteristics of modernism and was greatly affected by his background.

Loss is a big theme in modernism (Bryne). //Black Boy// is all about loss. It starts with the mother losing the case for child support and then the mother becomes ill and losses her job (Wright 901-906). The whole time the family is struggling to have enough food to survive. Another characteristic of modernism is destruction of the family unit (Bryne). In //Black Boy//, the family has been torn apart. The father is no longer a part of the family. The mother plea for child support makes him angry and no longe r  associates with the family at all (Wright 901-6).

According to Bryne another characteristic of modernism is that “ Characters may be given little or no physical description.” The characters in //Black Boy// are just seem to appear without much description to who they are or what they look like. Another characteristic of modernism is distrust especially of authority figures. “I was rapidly learning to distrust everything and everybody... Dread and distrust had already become a daily part of my being” (Wright 902-3). The distrust in this time stemmed from World War I and in this case the fact that everyone in his life seem to abandon him after some time. Wright's childhood and young adulthood probably greatly affected his writing of his story. Wright was exposed to racism from an early age. At the age of eight he witness his uncle being lynched by a group of white men (Meet 899). “Throughout his life, Wright repeatedly saw member of his race degraded by whites...” (899). His exposure to racism and violence from young age probably influenced him to write about what he witness. He most likely witnessed the poor black children scraping by just like the black boy in the story. Richard Wright's childhood greatly affected his writing of the short story //Black Boy.// This work also displays more characteristics of modernism. It is a very good representation of the inequality and racism of the time period. This work by Richard Wright perfectly fits the description of a modernism work in many ways. This story will probably be remembered for a long time to come.

Works Cited

Bryne, CJ. "Writing.Com: Understanding Modernism & Postmodernism." //Writing.Com: Writers, Writing, Poetry, Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Poetry Contests, Writing Contests//. 2005. Web. 04 May 2010. [|http://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/943010-Understanding-Modernism--Postmodernism.]

"Meet Richard Wright." //Glenoe Literature//. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm, Douglas Fisher, Beverly Chin, and Jacqueline Royster. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw Hill/ Glencoe, 2009. 899. Print.

Wright, Richard. "from Black Boy." Comp. Jeffery D. Wilhem, PhD. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw hill/ Glenoe, 2009. 901-06. Print.