Each little section in the writing I found myself underlining a lot of it. There was just so much in such a short piece. So much was wrong with the way things were while living under the Jim Crow laws. I thought this piece was a little bit weird. It almost had the theme of coming of age, but in a sad way. Throughout the years, the narrator learned how to act so that he could live his life as safely as possible. He starts out this piece with his fight with the white boys. When he expects comfort from his mother, and gets a whipping the reader I feel sympathy for him. I think the mother was extremely harsh and she didn’t seem very understanding. Although she may have been doing so in order to protect him, he was just a boy and to me it didn’t seem like that was the right way to go.
Throughout the rest of the piece, the reader sees that narrator learn what to say and what not to say in order to please the whites. He doesn’t always do so successfully though. When he firsts get a job for an optical company the boss told him “Boy, how would you like to try to learn something around here?” The narrator was very pleased by this he thought “working my way up. Even negroes have those visions.” From that point it seems like the narrator isn’t going to have things so bad and that he is going to have a decent job and do well. It was so ridiculous how angry the other white workers were at when he finally asked about moving up. They must have felt pretty threatened by that because they didn’t want him learning about a “white man’s work.” Eventually when that job falls through it is because of a ridiculous reason. Apparently he wasn’t respectful to one of the white workers, and got backed into a corner. They told him “When you are working for white folks, you got to stay in your place if you want to keep working.”
The narrator learned many other lessons throughout his life that would help him stay alive. For example, if a black person is being punished, they are lucky to survive, or escape without rape no matter how severe a beating, if they escape death than they are lucky. Also, he learned that he must always be respectful; yes sirs were always necessary when talking to a white person. There must be no bastardies, there must be no looking at a white woman the wrong way, and no reading (too much of an education was threatening). Basically, the blacks were legally free, but definitely not considered free. Everything that they did had to be watched carefully, and everything they wanted to say they had to make sure they chose their words wisely. By the end of this piece the reader can see that the narrator has overcome a lot of obstacles throughout his life, and that he has had to alter his way of life in order to fit into what the white people wanted from him.
7 comments:
I agree with, the mother was harsh but I think she wanted to protect her son. She had seen what happens when you go against the white man, and all she wants is for her son to live and flourish. Even though she is protecting him, part of me thinks that she should also be telling him to atand up for himself, although in these Circumstances I can see where she woundn't do that.
Amanda,
I like how you brought out some of the most important events in Wright’s life. I also like how you summed everything up, saying how Wright had to “alter his way of life in order to fit into what the white people wanted from him.” How sad is that? I cannot imagine having to be aware of my every move in order not to “overstep” my place according to someone else’s standards, in addition to having to deal with all of the everyday hardships of life! Your conclusion makes me agree with Wright’s perspective even more—this was a matter of utmost importance and was not something to be ignored, or even worse, accepted.
Amanda, nice point about how Wright is saying blacks are legally free, but there is still a lot of work to be done. He, unlike Hurston, is unwilling to settle for his current living conditions and wants something to change. I think that's why he includes all of these shocking examples. He wants to draw shock, outrage, and change out of the American people, but unfortunately he still had a long ways to go.
I agree with the point that although blacks were legally free there was sill a social slavery that existed. Wright's expirences seemed to be connected to the larger expierence that many blacks faced. It brought to light the slavery that the Black population faced in terms of the social constraints. It appeared that Blacks that Wright described were still in servile positions to whites.
Amanda,
I like how you pointed out that although Richard and his family are technically free, there are still certain ways in which they are to act and certain expectations in which they have to uphold as blacks. Richard, as he grows up, realizes that one must act as though they are “walking on egg shells” so to speak, around whites. I feel that his family helps him along the way. I know that his mom in the very beginning seems harsh because she beat him until he was sick, but I feel that she just did this in order to prepare her son for the type of world that they were living in. She was trying to insure that he understood and would be ready for the type of hardships that he would face because he is black in a world dominated by whites.
I like the way you wrote your ideas in your blog and summed all of the events in Wright's life up. Your statement about blacks legally being free was interesting, because they were, but in a sense they were not at all. There was still a lot of things to fix in society that need to be taken care of before blacks could actually feel the freedom that they "had" at this time in history.
I thought that the mother and the rest of the people who chose not to help the narrator were completely in the wrong. I felt the same way as you, I felt that at least the mother would help her son out and lead him in the right direction, but I guess not. I cannot imagine if the people who mattered the most to me would simply disregard my problems and choose to beat me instead of help me.
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