Black Boy: Redefining Success

718 Words3 Pages
Black Boy: Redefining Success All over the world, regardless of where people come from, they all share a common yearning in life—a propensity to fulfill their personal hopes and dreams. Profound literature often depicts the self-defining journeys people must undergo in their individual struggles to prevail. Entwined with penetrating imagery and resonant metaphorical language, Richard Wright brilliantly validates the unrelenting fortitude of those who must endure a particularly challenging course to succeed in attaining their goals by battling society’s inhibitions. While others physically fight against one another, Richard must triumph in a battle against the racial and economic injustices that keep him tightly bound to such deplorable conditions. Richard, unlike his community and family, indomitably stands against the black tradition of acquiescing to the embedded racism. “No matter how often I witnessed it,” Richard says, “I could not get used to it. How can they accept it?” Richard’s ability to stay immune to such oppression makes his struggle that much more formidable. Thus, standing headstrong in the unyielding face of adversity, not only from white supremacists, but also from his own community. Wright defines his young character through the culmination of many events in which Richard chooses to resist being stuck by the limitations set by everyone above him: age, class, standard, and knowledge. Wright exposes a more significant allegory reflecting Richard’s deeper strength and passion to succeed unconventionally, through the lens of each small battle and conflict he faces against the southern community. Metaphorically also representing Richard’s journey to reach such powers within him are the encounters in which he must challenge authority depicted through his struggles to extricate himself from their trap and achieve his goal in life. Wright remembers,
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