Literary Fiction Essay

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Recommended: Wright’s “the man who was almost a man”

Some people write for entertainment and some people write for fortune, but other people write to tell the world their story and enlighten us to life’s lessons. Literary fiction is created to do more than just merely entertain. It is created to tell a story, to take the reader from one mindset to another and bring about the reader’s understanding of the purpose. Literary fiction explores innate conflicts of the human condition through cosmic writing. Richard Wright chooses to use this kind of writing to reach the world. Wright grew up in a time where he was denied many privileges because of his color and he really made a point to express his feelings to us through his writing. His life, works and short story “A Man Who Was Almost a Man contribute directly to his literary style. Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on September 4th 1908 close to Natchez, Mississippi (Ferris 542). His father, Nathaniel Wright, was an illiterate sharecropper, and his mother, Ella Wilson, was a schoolteacher. When Wright was about five years old his father left the house forcing his mother to take one more work. For several years him and his brother spent time in an orphanage. He moved from school to school for many years and graduated as valedictorian of his ninth grade class in June of 1925 from Smith Robertson Junior High School in Jackson during June 1925. Once he was finished with grade school he started at Lanier High School. After only a few weeks he dropped out to work so he could save up enough money to go to Memphis. He was a jack of all trades so he worked on many small jobs. When he was seventeen he had finally saved up enough and was off to Memphis. He worked as a dishwasher and delivery boy for an optical company while in Memphis. He star... ... middle of paper ... ...t book, published in 1938. It is a collection of many stories that show dramatic representations of racial prejudice. In 1940 he created Native Boy which shows us the insane psychological pressures that can drive a young Chicago, Bigger Thomas, boy to murder. He created Black Boy in 1945, it was an autobiography, he reveals to us the shocking and devastating impact it made on him to grow up in the United States as a black boy in a time full of prejudice. In 1953 he came out with his philosophical novel, The Outsider. Then he further observed race problems in White Man, Listen! in 1957. The next year he came out with The Long Dream, a novel of slum life and all about his travels in Spain, Africa and Southeast Asia. After Wright passed away many of his other stories were published Eight Men (1961), Lawd Today (1963) and the autobiographical American Hunger (1977).

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