Nature Vs. Nurture In Richard Wright's Black Boy

The hardships Richard Wright faces living as an African American in the early 1900s shows the argument of Nature vs. Nurture in his memoir Black Boy. Richard Nathaniel Wright is an African American author who was born on September 4, 1908 in Roxie, Mississippi. His parents raised him for a short amount of time because his father deserted them, and then his mother grew very ill. The fact that his parents were not in the picture was the reason that Wright lived in an array of places, and it exposed him to different types of people in the south. He wrote his first piece of literature, which was a short story, in middle school and it is called “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” in the Jackson South Register. The book that established Wright as an

author was his novel, Native Son. It was about the struggles a black man faced during his time. After living in the south for a long time Wright moved up north. He could not deal with the amount of hate and racism that was embedded into the hearts of some people in America so, he left and lived out the rest of his days in Paris (Black).
The time period that Richard Wright lived in was not an easy time for African American men since white people in the south considered colored people to be inferior to them.

Slavery was abolished, but it was hard for colored people to get jobs to support their families, and when they did get a job, they had to work long and hard hours to earn enough money for bills. Sometimes it was not enough for food. This left young children unsupervised for hours, and at a young age they had to learn to support themselves. By fifteen, many had jobs. In the memoir, Richard frequently went to a bar at six years old because he was hungry and did not know where to find food. Random people would feed him, give him drinks, and even pay him if he said inappropriate things to other people in the bar. If his father was around, and his mother did not work long hours then that would not have happened

(Black).
Wright did not have the best family life because there was always tension and, he was never close with anyone in his family. The family members who had a major effect on him were his mother, father, and grandmother (Dykema-VanderArk). One factor that lead to him becoming distant was the fact that he felt suffocated at home. No one in his family ever supported any of his aspirations in life, and he was never able to express himself at home (Mahony). Growing up there were many times where he considered running away from home because of how he was treated. He was constantly being chastised by not just his parents, but his grandmother and aunt as well. The way he was raised helped determine his personality and who he wanted to be when he grew up (Butler).
His father was only in his life for a short period of time, but his actions helped influence some of Wright’s decisions in life.

He always looked at his father as a stranger living in his house and he never connected with him; he felt as if his presence stifled his voice and laughter. When his father abandoned their family, he became associated with the hunger he left behind since there was never much money to buy food and Wright would go days without eating. Whenever his stomach grumbled he would think of how much enmity he had for his dad (Dykema-VanderArk). After a long time Richard saw his father working on a plantation as a sharecropper. Wright realized that his father went to the city to better himself, but he failed. So he returned to the south to go back to his original job, a sharecropper. After realizing what he and his father both went through in the city he thought, “I was overwhelmed to realize that he could never understand me or the scalding experiences that had swept me beyond his life and into an area of living that he could never know… my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life… that same city which lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed of shores” (Wright 90). This shows that his journey and his father’s were much different. Wright fought to get to where he was, and he did not just give up when the going got rough. He had much more success in the city then his father did. He never dreamed that he

would make it to where he is now, but he is grateful for it. When he saw his father he realized that he had lost hope for a better future, his dreams of becoming more than a sharecropper, and finally he lost his joy (Butler).
The two other people who had a hand in helping Richard find himself were his mother and grandmother. His mother became very ill when he was a child which caused him to move around a lot. He alway wanted to be with his mom but it was hard for one person to take care of him, his mom, and his little brother. To him his mother’s paralysis “...symbolized the role of Blacks in southern society” (Butler). This is because he felt that she went through meaningless suffering when she was a good person and, most colored people suffered for things that were beyond their control. This set an emotional tone in his life to figure out the meaning of suffering. He is in a society that does not want to see him succeed and wants to keep him stuck in one place where he can not grow (Butler).
Everytime Wright moved he would always end up staying at his grandmother’s house in between going to live with new family members. He moved around from one racist place to another, and over time, it had an effect on him. It stripped him of any familiar bonds because he would never stay in one place for too long. He hated going to his grandmother’s house but, that was where his mother was so that is where he wanted to be. Her house symbolized repression and it made him feel claustrophobic. His grandmother’s view of church played a role in his development because he realized that he did not share the same views as the rest of his family (Butler). They tried to force their beliefs on him and, everytime he would reject them because he just did not believe in them. This caused a rift in their family because everyone else in his family were pious. He felt like they always had death on their minds and always looked at people thinking of how they are slowly dying. His grandmother constantly threatened him with the thought that he would go to hell if he did not convert, so he did. That though made him resent his grandmother (Ellison)