Read the excerpt from Black Boy.That day a quarter of a century later when I visited him on the plantation—he was standing against the sky, smiling toothlessly, his hair whitened, his body bent, his eyes glazed with dim recollection, his fearsome aspect of twenty-five years ago gone forever from him—I was overwhelmed to realize that he could never understand me or the scalding experiences that had swept me beyond his life and into an area of living that he could never know.What does the excerpt most clearly demonstrate about Wright's attitude toward his father?
Which excerpt from Black Boy best illustrates the effect that society has on Wright’s father?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.We left. I had the feeling that I had had to do with something unclean. Many times in the years after that the image of my father and the strange woman, their faces lit by the dancing flames, would surge up in my imagination so vivid and strong that I felt I could reach out and touch it; I would stare at it, feeling that it possessed some vital meaning which always eluded me.Based on this excerpt, how did Wright feel about his final boyhood encounter with his father?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.Finally I heard my mother’s name called; she rose and began weeping so copiously that she could not talk for a few moments; at last she managed to say that her husband had deserted her and her two children, that her children were hungry, that they stayed hungry, that she worked, that she was trying to raise them alone. Then my father was called; he came forward jauntily, smiling. He tried to kiss my mother, but she turned away from him. I only heard one sentence of what he said.“I’m doing all I can, Your Honor,” he mumbled, grinning.It had been painful to sit and watch my mother crying and my father laughing and I was glad when we were outside in the sunny streets. Wright uses this personal experience to establish
Which excerpt from Black Boy best explains Wright’s childhood perspective of his father?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.A quarter of a century was to elapse between the time when I saw my father sitting with the strange woman and the time when I was to see him again, standing alone upon the red clay of a Mississippi plantation, a sharecropper, clad in ragged overalls, holding a muddy hoe in his gnarled, veined hands—a quarter of a century during which my mind and consciousness had become so greatly and violently altered that when I tried to talk to him I realized that, though ties of blood made us kin, though I could see a shadow of my face in his face, though there was an echo of my voice in his voice, we were forever strangers, speaking a different language, living on vastly distant planes of reality. Which best explains Wright’s assertion that he and his father “were forever strangers”?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.From the white landowners above him there had not been handed to him a chance to learn the meaning of loyalty, of sentiment, of tradition. Joy was as unknown to him as was despair. As a creature of the earth, he endured, hearty, whole, seemingly indestructible, with no regrets and no hope. He asked easy, drawling questions about me, his other son, his wife, and he laughed, amused, when I informed him of their destinies. I forgave him, and pitied him as my eyes looked past him to the unpainted wooden shack.Based on this excerpt, which best describes how being a sharecropper impacts Wright’s father?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.My mother fell ill and the problem of food became an acute, daily agony. Hunger was with us always. Sometimes the neighbors would feed us or a dollar bill would come in the mail from my grandmother. It was winter and I would buy a dime’s worth of coal each morning from the corner coalyard and lug it home in paper bags. For a time I remained out of school to wait upon my mother, then Granny came to visit us and I returned to school.Through his personal experience, which social issue is Wright emphasizing?
Read the passage from Black Boy.“It’s not for me,” my mother was saying. “It’s for your children that I’m asking you for money.”“I ain’t got nothing,” my father said, laughing.“Come here, boy,” the strange woman called to me.I looked at her and did not move.“Give him a nickel,” the woman said. “He’s cute.”Wright most likely included this anecdote in order to
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.Then my father was called; he came forward jauntily, smiling. He tried to kiss my mother, but she turned away from him. I only heard one sentence of what he said.“I’m doing all I can, Your Honor,” he mumbled, grinning.It had been painful to sit and watch my mother crying and my father laughing and I was glad when we were outside in the sunny streets. Back at home my mother wept again and talked complainingly about the unfairness of the judge who had accepted my father’s word.What societal norm of the early twentieth century does this excerpt reflect?
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