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?
Read the excerpt from Black Boy.“I’ll take that poker and hit you!” I blurted at my father.He looked at my mother and laughed louder.“You told him to say that,” he said.“Don’t say such things, Richard,” my mother said. “You ought to be dead,” I said to the strange woman.The woman laughed and threw her arms about my father’s neck. I grew ashamed and wanted to leave.“How can you starve your children?” my mother asked. “Let Richard stay with me,” my father said.“Do you want to stay with your father, Richard?” my mother asked.“No,” I said.“You’ll get plenty to eat,” he said.“I’m hungry now,” I told him. “But I won’t stay with you.”What does the excerpt convey about Wright’s personality as a child?
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.From far beyond the horizons that bound this bleak plantation there had come to me through my living the knowledge that my father was a black peasant who had gone to the city seeking life, but who had failed in the city; a black peasant whose life had been hopelessly snarled in the city, and who had at last fled the city—that same city which had lifted me in its burning arms and borne me toward alien and undreamed-of shores of knowing.Which best describes Wright’s realization in this excerpt?
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
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 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
Which excerpt from Black Boy best explains Wright’s childhood perspective of his father?
Which excerpt from Black Boy best illustrates the effect that society has on Wright’s 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.Which best describes the author’s purpose in including this anecdote?
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