Literature is a work of arts that depicts the society, and because of this, individual’s perspectives of the society is needed.
Since the society is built up by human being, perhaps what constitutes the characteristics of human being are the ideas and experiences that are being stored in man, and this can be seen in any literary text, since ‘one cannot give what one does not have’ definitely, one cannot write what he does not know or have experience of it.
Biographical Criticism looks at the life of the author and how it has affected the text written by the author in order to best understand the word and world of the author and the text better, a situation whereby the life of the author is being examined in order to analyse the text, where there are similarities, where there are differences, the message that the author intended to pass across, the lesson to be learnt, how much of the author is in the text or how less. All these are being viewed in analysing any text using Biographical Criticism.
Black Boy shows the life of Richard Wright – the author- at the south of America, the text opens with Richard burning down the house of his parent. The first element that is being deployed in the text that reflects the author’s biography is the characters, in the text, all the characters bear the same name as those in real life – Richard Wright, Ella Wright (the mother of Richard), Nathan Wright ( the father of Wright) Alan, Grandpa, Granny, Uncle Hoskins etcetera- depicting the familiarity of the real world with world in literature, showing the experiences of each character in real life in the text.
The major character Richard Wright, represents the black young children in the southern part of America, how they were being dehumanised, subjugated and how race demarcation is being built in them, the character also represents the struggle of the black children in West America, what is being preached to them - how to behave with whites, how to cope and manage with maltreatment by the white, how to honour the white over their own health, economy and freedom, how to pretend to be fine even when they are not fine – parents teaching on religion and how the young ones have tried to ignore religion, based on what they have experienced in life even when they have been forced to accept Christ, they still don’t ‘feel anything', don’t see the essence of religion whole they are suffering.
Even after receiving the “right hand of fellowship”, Sunday school
bored me. The Bible stories seemed slow and meaningless when
compared to the bloody thunder of pulp narrative. And I was not
alone in feeling this; other boys went to sleep in Sunday school.
the boldest of us confessed that the entire thing was a fraud…(p. 136).
In another manner, Richard Wright shows the experience of young children searching for job in order to fend for themselves, their academics and even their parents;
‘Summer again. The old problem of hunting for a job. I told the
woman for whom I was working, a Mrs. Bibbs, that I needed an
all-day job… (p. 149).
At age seven, Richard has already started hunting for jobs doing different kinds of jobs all to fetch him money even though he never last one month at many of his workplace because if his intolerance towards the way the whites treat blacks and he is not alone in it, other classmates of his shares in the problem hunting for jobs at their tender age to cater for themselves and their family.
Ella Wright, Richard’s mother shows the rate of poverty in the society, and the type of family Richard came from and this can be seen in almost all the text by Richard Wright, a case in which the parent of the protagonist will be single, poor and health-wisely unstable, a reflection of his own family in order to understand how bad and hard the society is for women (black) during that time, his husband left him with Richard and his brother, she took the responsibility of taking care of them until she get sick of stroke and could not cater again but to rely on the extended family and her son – Richard.
Granny also reflects the religious background of Richard Wright, in line with other females in the house, Ella and aunt Addie who though sometimes have contradicting stands about religion still stands as the prominent religious figure in the text who tried to convince Richard to believe in God, these people represent the belief of People, women especially about religion in the society.
Grandpa also is another character that reflects more of Richard Wright’s background. He was a slave who fought in the civil ear that took place in America and is being denied if his entitlement due to a mistake by the registrar registering their names, this shows how Africans were colonised, enslaved used for ear and dumped in America, Grandpa ruminates and often times exclaim because of his denied entitlement.
Another catchy element deployed by Richard Wright is the settings; geographical and temporal. Both revelations reflect the life of the author himself, for the reader to be able to understand the text better in respect to place and time of the literary text, that is, what was happening then at South – Mississippi, Natchez, Roxie and Memphis and his life 1812 to 1927 which is the exact date if his life right from six years old till he moved to Chicago, he used this to explain the life people living in the south, how the young, old, make, female, white and black co-habit together and how they relate to one another.
One could possibly find out that characters of Wright are built out of historical aesthetics which Wright could make out of his four-square childhood experience. Black boy captures life of Richard Wright and other characters present in his life as a child growing in an interracial American society.
©Joshua OLADEBO, 2022
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