Overpowering Emotion In Black Boy By Richard Wright

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Anger is an overpowering emotion. In the memoir Black Boy by Richard Wright, anger plays a huge role. Over the course of his journey in life anger comes up everyday. Richard grew into the person he is because of anger. The experience’s Richard has had with the hate in his work life, home life, school life, and his community life, has caused him to become hateful person, therefore, his anger is destructive to himself. When it came to Richard's family life there were many situations in which they were discriminated against and this made Richard very upset. When Richard is a child is uncle is shot. He had been worried about “white” people finally getting him and one day someone comes to the door and says “Mr. Hoskins… he done been shot. Done been shot by white man.” (p. 54) This causes panic in the family and everyone is deeply saddened. Richard here's a boy yell “White folks say they’ll kill all his kinfolks!” (p. 54) This causes Richard to begin to fear whites even more. They hurt his family and he's never going to forget this. Richard describes his thought of white people as “white terror” (p. 55). Richard is now overwhelmed with feels of frustration and fear. When he was …show more content…

He knows that the people around him are frightened and if you see adults frightened, kids become frightened. He comes upon a group of boys who are casually having a conversation and is actually much deeper where they mention things that scare them and stories they know about the cruelty and injustice in their community. One boy says “My mom says that old white women where she works talked ‘about slapping her.” (p. 80) Hearing this causes a boy to turn to rage yelling “Hell, I woulda just killed her if she had said that to me!” (p. 80) Hearing the anger and aggression these boys in his community feel resonates on Richard. All the events continue to add up for him. Richards community is afraid of whites and is upset at them and so is

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