Richard Wright Lesson 1 Biography

7/29/2019 Richard Wright Lesson 1 Biography

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Richard Wright

1908-1960


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Biography

Born on a plantation near Natchez,Mississippi, on September 4, 1908.

Son of a sharecropper who deserted his

family when Wright was 5.His mother became ill, and the familymoved to Jackson, Mississippi with his

grandmother. Grandmother tried to stop Wright from writing.

His grandmother attempted to crush hisimagination.


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Biography

Wright and his brother lived in anorphanage for a short time because offamily problems.

He would recall his childhood as a time ofhunger.

For food, but also for affection, understanding,and education.

Although a very good student, Wrightnever graduated from high school.


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Biography

Wrights jobs in the South were marked by

harassment by whites and by his own disdain for

what segregation and racism had done to distort

the humanity of his fellow blacks, as he saw it.The harsh conditions of the South pushed

Wright to his first exposure with Urban

Natural ism.

Wright said he could not read enough of them.


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Urban Naturalism

The term naturalism describes a type ofliterature that attempts to apply scientificprinciples of objectivity and detachment to

its study of human beings. Unlike realism, which focuses on literary

technique, naturalism implies a philosophicalposition:

For naturalistic writers, since human beings are, inEmile Zola's phrase, "human beasts," characterscan be studied through their relationships to theirsurroundings.


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Urban Naturalism

Key themes of Urban Naturalism: Survival, determinism, violence, and taboo.

The "brute within" each individual,composed of strong and often warring emotions:

passions, such as lust, greed, or the desire for dominance orpleasure;

and the fight for survival in an amoral, indifferent universe.

The conflict in naturalistic novels is often "man againstnature" or "man against himself"

Characters struggle to retain a "veneer of civilization" despite

external pressures that threaten to release the "brute within. Example: Bigger Thomas

The forces of heredity and environment as they affect,and afflict, individual lives.


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Biography

In 1927, Wright fled the South for Chicago.

In Chicago, Wright seemed headed for a careerin the post office but was also determined tobecome a writer.

Wright found a circle of friends with similar viewsin 1933 when he joined the John Reed Club. It was a nationwide organization founded by the

communist party to attract writers and artists.

Between 1933 and 1940 (the first major stage ofhis literary career), communism was clearly themajor intellectual and political force of Wrightslife.


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Biography

In 1938 four of his stories were collected asUncle Toms Children.

He then received a Guggenheim Fellowship,which allowed him to complete his first novel,

Native Son (1940).In 1939, he married Dhimah Rose Meadman, awhite dancer, but the two separated shortlythereafter.

In 1941, he married Ellen Poplar, a whitemember of the Communist Party, and they hadtwo daughters, Julia in 1942 and Rachel in1949.


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Biography

After moving to Paris in 1946, Wright became friendswith Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus while goingthrough an Existentialist phase best depicted by hissecond novel, The Outsiders (1953).

In his last years, he was plagued by illness (aerobicdysentary) and financial hardship.Throughout this period he wrote approximately 4,000English Haikus (some of which were recently publishedfor the first time) and another novel, The Long Dream, in1958.

After his death on November 28, 1960, another of hiscollections of short stories, Eight Men, was published.

His most famous work is still his autobiographical work,Black Boy(1945).


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Themes and Goals ofNative Son

Major goal of Wrights writing:

The exposure of the starkest realities ofAmerican life where race was concerned.

Themes: The effects of racism on the individual

Communism

Naturalism Justice

The comforts of Religion


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Native Son

This was meant to be Americas guide inconfronting the danger of facing the profoundconsequences of more than two centuries of theenslavement and segregation of blacks in North

America.

Slavery and neo-slavery had led not simply tothe development of a psychology of timidity,passivity, and even cowardice among African

American masses.

Wright suggests that it also gives rise tocharacters like Bigger Thomas.


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Bigger Thomas

These characters are estranged from both

black and white culture through their hatred of

both cultures, which gives rise to acts of

violence. These acts of violence were most often aimed

at other African Americans, but Wright warned

that one day it would be aimed at whites.


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Intellectual Forces

Other than naturalism, two other intellectual

forces came together to shape Native Son;

communism and existentialism.

Communism: the political and economic doctrine that aims to

replace private property and a profit-based economy

with public ownership and communal control of at

least the major means of production and the naturalresources of a society.


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Existentialism

Existentialism:

The Existentialist conceptions of freedom andvalue arise from their view of the individual.

Since we are all ultimately alone, isolatedislands of subjectivity in an objective world,we have absolute freedom over our internalnature, and the source of our value can only

be internal. Main principle:Existence precedes Essence.


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Existentialism

To review the essential beliefs of Frenchexistentialists, consider the following ideas:1. Existentialists believe in free will.

2. Existentialists do not recognize any human or

immortal authority. Denied Gods existence in a cruel world, full of suffering.

No Faith because no hope.

3. Existentialists believe that they are responsible forall the consequences of their actions.

4. Existentialists do not believe in an afterlife.5. Sartre stated that we "are condemned to be free."

6. Camus stated that "life is absurd."

Richard Wright Lesson 1 Biography

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