Hunger

529 Words2 Pages

Do You Think the Boy’s Mother Made the Proper
Choice in Dealing with Her Son?
In Richard Wright’s “Hunger”, a mother is forced with a difficult decision. Should she “baby” her child and prevent him from fighting, or should she encourage him to fight and “stand up like a man”? Unfortunately, the mother’s decision is a clear one. The mother tells the boy to stand up for himself and fight back.
The story “Hunger” is a story with a very clear message. The message of this story is that a person at any age, instead of hiding from his problems, must face his or her problems. In “Hunger”, the reader understands how to make a living and support himself or herself. After the father of the boy leaves him, the boy and his mother had to become the householders. Wright, very clearly, describes the situation of the boy’s family situation. The main characters are the mother and her son.
The author of this story describes how the mother sends her son to the grocery store. On his way to the grocery store, the boy is attacked by a couple of neighborhood boys. When the boy comes home and tells his mother what happens, the mother tells the boy that he must stand up for himself by sending him to the store to face the boys. Every time the boy goes to the store, the neighborhood boys would beat him up. Finally, the boy got tired of getting beaten and defends himself: he beats the boys with a stick The boy finally wins “the right to the streets of Memphis” meaning that that night, he won the right of being safe on the streets of where he lived, Memphis.
The mother plays a very important part in this story. The mother from the beginning of the story is dealt with a difficult decision of how to feed her 2 boys after her husband leaves her. Since the husband worked, he brought food into the house, but when he left, there was no one who worked. The mother had to get a job, which made her tired. When the mother came home from work tired, she would send the boy to the store. When the mother found out that the neighborhood boys were beating up her son, she repeatedly sent him to the store, so he faces the boys and learns to stand up for himself.

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