the careless boy

thoughts

Because Memphis is a larger, more cosmopolitan city than Jackson, there are slight differences in social behavior which Richard quickly recognizes. He works in an optical company with about twelve whites ranging from Ku Klux Klanners to several Jews and a Catholic and several blacks. The elevator operator, Shorty, a light-skinned black man, comes to represent what Richard fears and dislikes most in the world. Shorty lets himself be kicked and abused by the whites in the building; he makes a big joke of it in order to pick up an extra tip. He makes a farce out of the relationship between blacks and whites, reducing it to comic sadomasochism.

Richard feels nothing but contempt for Shorty, who is able to let these things happen only because he has given up hope for change or escape. His intelligence and literacy don't matter to him. Although he hates white people, he will let them step all over him for the most trivial, monetary reward. Shorty is not the only one used by whites, however; Richard and another black boy, Harrison, who works for a rival optical house across the street, are soon used as pawns by whites. It is a grotesque situation in which they are made to mistrust each other in spite of their knowing, reasonably, there is nothing to fear. The whites, however, manipulate the two black boys' minds to the extent that they have no control over their emotions. It is only when Richard and Harrison are fully suspicious of one another that the whites reveal their motives. They want the two black boys to fight for five dollars while they watch. Richard resists the temptation for money many times but is finally persuaded by Harrison that they will only play at fighting, so he agrees.

The result is a disaster and a humiliation beyond Richard's wildest dreams. It is, in fact, one of the only experiences in the book where we are conscious of some reluctance on the part of the writer to reveal the experience. It is something from which he will never recover, not only for personal reasons, but because of the larger implications. He, like Shorty, has allowed himself to be "used" for money.

Wright feels the effects of s*****y still alive in himself, as they are alive in the whole society around him. He might as well be back on the plantation listening to his master's voice. Although the whites don't know who he is, they have structured the society against ever knowing him; as a result, he and they are inescapably bound together. His hatred for himself springs from his hatred for them. It seems that the only way Richard can redeem himself is by finding some measure of forgiveness for them.

It has been said by Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, that most writers have one thing in common: they both love and hate the place of their origins. Richard Wright certainly fits into this category; but it is only toward the end of his autobiography that the conflict in his feelings becomes clear. Up until now, the reader has picked up only distant strains of nostalgia and affection for the South. Love has been but a minor refrain throughout the book. Yet its presence is always felt and it accounts for the Blues-like quality of the book.

Now, in the thirteenth chapter, Richard enters into a state of mind which will bring both an attachment to, and a liberation from, the South. First, he happens to read an article about H. L. Mencken, and the very fact that Mencken is being attacked draws Richard toward him. He longs to read him, but it is only by the most circuitous method that he can achieve the simple satisfaction of getting into a library. A white coworker, who is Catholic and therefore maligned by most southerners, lends Richard his library card. This is the beginning of his self-education.

Through Mencken's essays, Richard learns the names of other American writers, as well as learning how prose can be used as a weapon. This is all Richard needs. To discover that the pen can be as mighty as the sword is a terrific surprise to him; and then to read these other writers (who also feel themselves alienated from the American scene) is a revelation.

Through reading Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and the major European writers, Wright not only begins to understand himself better, but to understand white people too. They are no longer so strange and impenetrable to him. Yet he must conceal from everyone what he is learning. He continues to work and to read and to play dumb for the benefit of his own survival and in order to bring his mother and brother to Memphis. But he is undergoing the final stage in his painful growth, and his secret world is his most important world.

What should have been a joy, a liberation, and a means of communication, however, are for Richard just the opposite. He has no one with whom he can talk about his discoveries or his dreams. There is no guarantee that they will come to fruition. He considers the alternatives, however, to pursuing these dreams, but they are so horrible that he ends up without a choice. He is coming to realize just how unalterable human character is. And although he is conscious of the many forces that have conspired to make him what he is, there still remains a mystery as to why he should be so profoundly alienated from ordinary people. He cannot change who he is or what course he must follow. Any other course would make him not only miserable, but he wouldn't even be successful pursuing it. Yet he cannot feel any relief in knowing who he is. To be both an American writer and an American black is to be permanently in exile, an outsider on one's own native soil. Richard has no choice now in being a writer, just as he has never had a choice in being the man or the color that he is.