Dissecting Racism: An Analysis of Richard Wright's Imagery

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Richard Wright operates haunting imagery, vehement symbolism, and tranquil diction to denote the narrator's realization that racism is always prevalent in American society, and to show his disdain with the people who can perpetuate such an awful crime. Throughout his poem "Between the World and Me" author Richard Wright utilizes a variety of images to portray the narrator's absolute horror and disgust toward the scene he has found. By combining the switches between melancholy to shock to nostalgia to gruesome and violent imagery along with a shifting point of view, Wright is able to create a vivid and surreal scene. The speaker stumbles on the remains of horrific violence, but the evidence that remains is all dormant, reflected by tranquil …show more content…

Wright calls it the “whore's lipstick” alluding to the fact that that woman is a prostitute who is more worried about her appearance and the possible collection of money than she is in an innocent life. The tube of lipstick is brought back into the poem later on by Wright, where he once again alludes to this anonymous woman being a prostitute when he and the victim become one and he sees through the victim's eyes where “the whore smeared the lipstick red upon her lips.” The narrator seems personally offended by this woman and her lipstick. “Between The World And Me” is a retelling of a lynching, and because only the details of the brutish crime are revealed and the victim stays anonymous, the poem itself is a powerful tool, providing insight into a historical epoch and a window into one response to it. It's about how history is animate, and how we are witnesses of the past, even the portions that transpired before us. “Between The World And Me” recognizes the human capacity for evil, to be appalled by its callous manifestations, and to promote the necessary vigilance to deter such horrible episodes from ever happening again and to recognize that to truly understand another person's pain, we must move from sympathy to empathy and from that empathy to identification with that

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