The Motif of Hunger in Richard Wright’s “Black Boy”

Hunger is a motif that is repeated extensively throughout Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy. In fact, the title of the novel was originally named American Hunger until it was changed to Black Boy a year later. By frequently reminding the reader of the problem of his physical hunger, Wright emphasizes his hunger for other things as well — for literature, artistic expression, and engagement in social and political issues. Both Richard and the world have a more important need: understanding of and connection with one another. This “American Hunger” becomes one of the dominant emotional states of his young life, and a metaphor for both the lack that he must face as a result of Southern racism and his gnawing desire to escape that life. In Black Boy, hunger shapes Richard’s emotions, gives him his work ethic, leads him to explore literature and engagement in social and political issues, and forces him to escape the South.
Richard Wright often connects his negative emotional feelings with literal hunger. Because Richard’s father left Richard as a young child, Richard’s mother could not financially support the family and therefore Richard suffered intense hunger and intensely negative side effects like stomach pain, dizziness, etc. He even started to hallucinate about his hunger. “Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played,” he says, “but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gauntly”. Later, when his mother becomes ill and cannot support the children, Wright moves in with his grandmother in Jackson. There, his diet improves slightly, but he still does not eat enough to feel satisfied. Hunger becomes one of the dominant emotional states of his young life and it is something he constantly has to think and deal with.
Although Richard continues to tie his feelings of hunger with negative emotional feelings, he is a proud character. He doesn’t accept or want the food that strangers offer him. Richard reflects that, “When the neighbors offered me food, I refused, already ashamed that so often in my life I had to be fed by strangers.” He doesn’t want other people to know that he is hungry. At the same time needing to put food in his belly is what makes him work so hard. In fact, it’s the American way.
Richard Wright’s hunger for more in life additionally leads him to literature and writing. Even as a young child, Richard has been fascinated with reading. In Chapter 2, Ella reads a fictional story to Richard. As soon as he is exposed to the literature, he is enthralled with it and is keen to hear more. Richard immediately after says, “I hungered for the sharp, frightening breath-taking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me, and I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were”. Later, when Richard gains access to the library in chapter 13 he says he,“hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing.” He reads the books of many famous writers, including Mencken, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Baudelaire, and Nietzsche. Here he is exposed to new ideas of communism, society, etc. Richard then says that he “could endure the hunger.” and that he “had a new hunger”. This “new hunger” is the motivation and desire to leave the south and find a new life for himself.
“American Hunger” becomes one of Richard’s dominant emotional states of his young life, and a metaphor for both the lack that he must face as a result of Southern racism and his gnawing desire to escape that life. In Black Boy, hunger shapes Richard’s emotions, gives him his work ethic, leads him to explore literature and engagement in social and political issues, and forces him to escape the South. Although Wright does not believe that life in Chicago will be paradise, he sees, in Jackson and in Memphis, what lives of servitude, violence, and deprivation can do to black society. Wright hopes that, by living in the north, he will be able to satisfy his intense hunger for a better life.
