Black Boy - Richard Wright

Literary Environment in Black Boy

At several points in Black Boy, Richard Wright mentions the literary movements Realism and Naturalism. Each occurrence follows a passage in which the young Richard Wright has immersed himself in books, from pulp fiction to modern literature. And Wright, it seems, ascribes to the idea of environmental causality; he draws upon his environment constantly, and uses the environments of his characters to form their descriptions. But he also expresses hope that, by changing his environment, he will grow and change into a person who, although southern at the core, defies his naïve upbringing.

Wright uses his reading as a form of escape from his anxieties, his physical hunger, and his environment as a whole. In this way, the literature he reads in the latter chapters of Part One becomes at once symbolic of the North and, remarkably, a formative environment in itself.

The novels created moods in which I lived for days. […] I grew silent, wondering about the life around me. It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself. (250)

By virtue of his reading, Wright begins more than ever to question the actions and authority of those around him and becomes fully aware of their confines, their stereotypical behavior. His reading allows him to grow and change in a way that neither his religious household nor his insufficient schooling would allow. And it is this reading which provides a catalyst; Wright, through the literature for which he hungers and voraciously consumes, becomes mentally and physically closer to his aspirations of traveling north. The books instill in him a distance between himself and his environment in the south, effectively uprooting him and transplanting him to the north while he was still sweeping floors, boarding with the Mosses, living his humble life in Memphis.