BLACKBOY by Richard Wright

Plot Overview
REQUIRED TO REMAIN QUIET while his grandmother lies ill in bed, four-year-old Richard Wright becomes bored and begins playing with fire near the curtains, leading to his accidentally burning down the family home in Natchez, Mississippi. In fear, Richard hides under the burning house. His father, Nathan, retrieves him from his hiding place. Then, his mother, Ella, beats him so severely that he loses consciousness and falls ill.
Nathan abandons the family to live with another woman while Richard and his brother, Alan, are still very young. Without Nathan’s financial support, the Wrights fall into poverty and perpetual hunger. Richard closely associates his family’s hardship—and particularly their hunger—with his father and therefore grows bitter toward him.
For the next few years, Ella struggles to raise her children in Memphis, Tennessee. Her long hours of work leave her little time to supervise Richard and his brother. Not surprisingly, Richard gets into all sorts of trouble, spying on people in outhouses and becoming a regular at the local saloon—and an alcoholic—by the age of six. Ella’s worsening health prevents her from raising two children by herself and often leaves her unable to work. During these times, Richard does whatever odd jobs a child can do to bring in some money for the family. School is hardly an option for him. At one point, the family’s troubles are so severe that Ella must place her children in an orphanage for a few weeks.
Life improves when Ella moves to Elaine, Arkansas, to live with her sister, Maggie, and her sister’s husband, Hoskins. Hoskins runs a successful saloon, so there is always plenty of food to eat, a condition that Richard greatly appreciates but to which he cannot accustom himself. Soon, however, white jealousy of Hoskins’s business success reaches a peak, as local white men kill Hoskins and threaten the rest of his family. Ella and Maggie flee with the two boys to West Helena, Arkansas. There, the two sisters’ combined wages make life easier than it had been in Memphis. After only a short time, however, Maggie flees to Detroit with her lover, Professor Matthews, leaving Ella the sole support of the family. Hard economic times return.
Times become even harder when a paralytic stroke severely incapacitates Ella. Richard’s grandmother brings Ella, Richard, and Alan to her home in Jackson, Mississippi. Ella’s numerous siblings convene in Jackson to decide how to care for their ailing sister and her two boys. The aunts and uncles decide that Alan, Richard’s brother, will live with Maggie in Detroit. Ella will remain at home in Jackson. Richard, given the freedom to choose which aunt or uncle to live with, decides to take up residence with Uncle Clark, as Clark lives in Greenwood, Mississippi, not far from Jackson. Soon after he arrives at Clark’s house, Richard learns from a neighbor that a young boy had died years ago in the same bedroom Richard now occupies. Too terrified to sleep, Richard successfully pleads to be returned to his grandmother’s home.
Back at Granny’s, Richard once again faces the familiar problem of hunger. He also faces a new problem: Granny’s incredibly strict religious regimen. Granny, a Seventh-Day Adventist, sees her strong-willed, dreamy, and bookish grandson as terribly sinful, and she struggles mightily to reform him. Another of Richard’s aunts, Addie, soon joins the struggle against Richard’s defiance. Richard’s obsession with reading and his lack of interest in religion make his home life an endless conflict. Granny forces him to attend the religious school where Aunt Addie teaches.

One day in class, Aunt Addie beats Richard for eating walnuts, though it was actually the student sitting in front of Richard who had been eating the nuts, not Richard. When Addie tries to beat Richard again after school that day, he fends her off with a knife. Similar scenes recur with frustrating frequency over the following months and years. One time, Richard dodges one of Granny’s backhand slaps, causing her to lose her balance and injure herself in a fall off the porch. Addie tries to beat Richard for this incident, but he again fends her off with a knife. Later, another of Richard’s uncles, Tom, comes to live with the family. One morning, Tom asks Richard what time it is and thinks Richard responds in a sassy manner. He tries to beat Richard for his supposed insolence, but the boy fends him off with razor blades.
Meanwhile, Richard picks his way through school. He delights in his studies—particularly reading and writing—despite a home climate hostile to such pursuits. To the bafflement and scorn of everyone, he writes and publishes in a local black newspaper a story titled “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre.” He graduates from the ninth grade as valedictorian, giving his own speech despite the -insistence of his principal, friends, and family that he give a school-sanctioned speech to appease the white audience.
As Richard enters the adult working world in Jackson, he suffers many frightening, often violent encounters with racism. In the most demoralizing of these encounters, two white Southerners, Pease and Reynolds, run Richard off his job at an optical shop, claiming that such skilled work is not meant for blacks. Richard is upset because the white Northerner who runs the company, Mr. Crane, has hired Richard specifically for the purpose of teaching a black man the optical trade, but then does little to actually help defend Richard against his racist employees.
As his despair grows, Richard resolves to leave for the North as soon as possible. He becomes willing to steal in order to raise the cash necessary for the trip. After swindling his boss at a movie -theater, selling stolen fruit preserves, and pawning a stolen gun, Richard moves to Memphis, where the atmosphere is safer and where he can make his final preparations to move to Chicago.
In Memphis, Richard has the seeming good fortune of finding a kind, generous landlady, Mrs. Moss, who determines that he must marry her daughter, Bess. Richard does not take to Bess, so his living situation is awkward until Mrs. Moss comes to terms with the fact that her daughter will never be Richard’s wife. Richard takes a job at another optical shop, where Olin, a seemingly benevolent white coworker, plays mind games with Richard and Harrison, another young black worker, in an attempt to get them to kill each other. These strategies culminate in a grotesque boxing match between Richard and Harrison.
Another white coworker in the optical shop, Falk, is genuinely benevolent and lets Richard use his library card to check out books that otherwise would be unavailable to him. Richard begins reading obsessively and grows more determined to write. His mother, brother, and Maggie soon join him in Memphis. They all decide that Richard and Maggie will go to Chicago immediately and that the other two will follow in a few months.
In Chicago, Richard continues to struggle with racism, segregation, poverty, and with his own need to cut corners and lie to protect himself and get ahead. He suppresses his own morals, forcing himself to work at a corrupt insurance agency that takes advantage of poor blacks. He also works in a café and for a couple of well-meaning Jewish storeowners, the Hoffmans, in a whites-only neighborhood. Irresponsibly, Richard soon quits to try to get a job in the post office.
As the Great Depression forces him and millions of others out of work, Richard begins to find Communism appealing, especially its emphasis on protecting the oppressed. He becomes a Communist Party member because he thinks that he can help the Party cause with his writing, finding the language that can promote the Party’s cause to common people.
Meanwhile, Richard works various jobs through federal relief programs. When he begins writing for leftist publications, he takes positions with federal theater companies and with the Federal Writers’ Project. To his mounting dismay, he finds that, like any other group, the Communist Party is beset with human fears and foibles that constantly frustrate its own ends. Richard’s desire to write biographical sketches of Communists and his tendency to criticize Party pronouncements earn him distrust, along with the titles “intellectual” and “Trotskyite.” After a great deal of political strife and slander that culminates in his being physically assaulted during a May Day parade, Richard leaves the Party. Unfazed by the failure of his high hopes, he remains determined to make writing his link to the world.



Character List
Richard Wright - Author, narrator, and protagonist of Black Boy. Richard is an unpredictable bundle of contradictions: he is timid yet assured, tough yet compassionate, enormously intelligent yet ultimately modest. Passive-aggressive as a young boy, Richard either says very little or becomes melodramatic and says too much. Growing up in an abusive family environment in the racially segregated and violent American South, Richard finds his salvation in reading, writing, and thinking. He grows up feeling insecure about his inability to meet anyone’s expectations, particularly his family’s wish that he accept religion. Even though he remains isolated from his environment and peers, at the autobiography’s end Richard has come to accept himself. Black Boy testifies to his gifted observational powers and his ability to reflect upon the psychological struggles facing black Americans. Richard’s most essential characteristic is his tremendous belief in his own worth and capabilities. This belief frequently renders him willful, stubborn, and disrespectful of authority, putting him at odds with his family and with those who expect him to accept his degraded position in society. Because almost everyone in Richard’s life thinks this way, he finds himself constantly punished for his nonconformity with varying degrees of physical violence and emotional isolation. Though Richard shows signs of insecurity, inferiority, and shame around some whites, his self-assurance seems largely -invulnerable, and his punishing childhood only serves to convince him of his own right to succeed in the world. Moreover, Richard’s difficult and isolating experiences as a child fuel his intensely powerful imagination, his love of reading and writing, and his will to make his life feel meaningful through writing about his environment.
Wright paints himself in several different shades throughout the course of Black Boy. As a young boy, Richard is simply unable to believe the publicly accepted notions that his blackness, lack of religion, and intellectual curiosity make him inherently flawed. Rather, we find in Richard a character determined to live according to his own principles and willing to live with the consequences. This strong-willed nature, however, contrasts with Richard’s powerless position in society—the low social status that comes with being black and poor. Starting off removed from society and his family, Richard must learn to educate himself. Much of this education stems from his experiences—in the homes of sharecroppers, as a black in the Jim Crow South, as a resident of the cramped apartments of Depression-era Chicago. There are clearly negative aspects to the character Richard develops, as we see him lie, steal, and turn violent numerous times in the book. In a sense, he is a victim of his poor upbringing—in both the black and white communities in the South; as a victim, he becomes contaminated by the oppressive forces working against him.
Despite his flaws, Richard remains intensely concerned with humanity, both in a universal sense and in the context of his concern for the individual people he meets on his journey. In this way, Richard overcomes the negative, debilitating, isolating aspects of his environment and channels them into a love for other people. He is an outsider who feels little connection to other people, yet who cares for these people nonetheless. Richard’s traits do not exist in perfect harmony: at certain points, one trait will seem to dominate, only to give way to other traits at other times. However, because the character of Richard Wright so convincingly contains all these traits, albeit in imbalance, he has a self-contradictory appeal that transcends the simple biographical facts of his life.


Ella Wright - Richard’s mother. Tough on Richard and certainly unafraid to administer a beating when she believes it is appropriate, Ella nevertheless loves her son and is the person most resembling an advocate in his life. Despite falling into ill health and becoming partially paralyzed, she maintains an optimistic outlook on life. Ella Wright
Richard’s contentious relationship with his mother may be traced back to his early childhood, when Ella administers a beating that nearly kills him. This strife continues throughout Richard’s early years, as he commits endless punishable offenses in a setting where his mother is often the only authority figure around to deliver punishment. Despite her sometimes brutal discipline, Ella is devoted to her children and is fiercely determined to raise them successfully after her husband abandons the family.
Ella shows a special tolerance and affection for Richard that we do not see in any of the other major characters. When Richard publishes “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” for example, the rest of the family attacks him, but Ella shows compassion through her concern that Richard’s writing might make it hard for him to get a job. Similarly, Ella walks on her weak legs to give Richard a hug when she learns that he will get a job in defiance of Granny’s and Addie’s wishes, suggesting that she takes genuine delight in her son’s success.
Much of the meaning of Ella’s character lies in her illness, as she symbolizes those elements of life that are at once unpredictable, overwhelming, and unfair. In Chapter 3, Ella’s suffering effectively becomes a symbol of everything wrong with the world for Richard. In a just universe, he concludes, the unfriendly and harmful people would be sick, and Ella would enjoy vigorous health, unimpeded in going about the business of raising her sons and earning a living. However, the reality is, of course, that Ella is constantly sick and suffering. In light of the seemingly cruel fate his mother endures, Richard finds it difficult to deny that the universe is unjust. The injustice he sees afflicting his mother mirrors the injustices he himself faces: poverty, hunger, a severely abridged education, and the mere fact of being black in the Jim Crow South. Taken together, these accidents of life constitute a major obstacle that Richard must overcome in order to live the life that he wants.

Granny - Richard’s maternal grandmother. Austere and unforgiving, Granny is a very strict Seventh-Day Adventist and runs her household accordingly. She thinks Richard is sinful, has little tolerance for his antics, and is inclined to demonstrate her disapproval with a quick backhanded slap across his mouth. Like her husband, Richard Wilson, Granny is the child of slaves. Due to her partially white ancestry, she looks somewhat white.
Alan - Richard’s younger brother. Born Leon Alan Wright, he goes by the name Alan. Alan does not contribute much to the story of Black Boy: a few times, he limply objects to something naughty that Richard is planning to do, like burn straws in a fireplace or hang a kitten. In this sense, he serves as one of Richard’s critics.
Aunt Addie - One of Ella’s sisters. Addie lives at home with Granny in Jackson, Mississippi. She shares her mother’s spite for Richard and tries not to miss any opportunity to beat or humiliate him. She shares Granny’s intense religious nature and teaches at a religious school that Richard briefly attends.
Grandpa - Richard’s maternal grandfather and a former soldier in the Union Army during the Civil War. Sour and remote, Grandpa is forever bitter that a clerical error has deprived him of his war pension. He keeps his distance from the family but is occasionally trotted out to discipline Richard. Grandpa keeps a loaded gun by his bed, as he believes that Civil War hostilities could resurface at any moment.
Nathan Wright - Richard’s father. Although Nathan is physically intimidating and frequently beats Richard, he abandons the family and proves to be simple, weak, and pathetic.
Aunt Maggie - Ella’s sister. Maggie sporadically lives with Ella, Richard, and his brother, and is Richard’s favorite aunt.
Uncle Hoskins - Maggie’s first husband. Uncle Hoskins is a friendly man, but loses Richard’s trust when he pretends to drive his buggy into the river to frighten Richard. Local whites murder Hoskins when they grow jealous of his profitable saloon.
“Professor” Matthews - Maggie’s second husband. The “Professor” is an outlaw and, when he begins courting Maggie, he visits only at night. After he apparently kills a white woman, he and Maggie flee to Detroit. Several years after that, he deserts Maggie.
Uncle Clark - One of Ella’s brothers. Uncle Clark briefly houses Richard after his mother becomes ill. Clark is a just, upright man who seems genuinely concerned for Richard’s welfare, although perhaps a little strict.
Uncle Tom - Another of Ella’s brothers. Like Aunt Addie, Uncle Tom finds Richard particularly galling and seems to leap at any opportunity to beat or ridicule him.
Ella, the schoolteacher - A young schoolteacher who briefly rents a room in Granny’s house. Bookish and dreamy, she introduces Richard to the imaginative pleasures of fiction by telling him the story of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives. Granny, however, views Ella’s stories as sinful and effectively forces Ella to move out.
Griggs - One of Richard’s boyhood friends. Griggs, like Richard, is intelligent, but he has a sense of when blacks need to abide by the rules—a sense Richard lacks. Griggs displays the compassionate concern of a true friend when he advises Richard on how to survive in the racist white world.
Pease and Reynolds - Two white Southerners who run Richard off his job at the optical shop in Jackson, Mississippi. Though technically two characters, Pease and Reynolds are unified in their bestial treatment of Richard and essentially operate as one.
Mr. Crane - A white Northerner who runs the optical shop where Richard works. Mr. Crane is a fair and unprejudiced man, who is sad to see Richard go when Pease and Reynolds run him off the job.
Olin - A white Southerner at Richard’s job at the optical shop in Memphis, Tennessee. Racist and destructive, Olin pretends to be Richard’s friend but then tells lies in an attempt to get Richard and Harrison to kill each other.
Harrison - A young black man who works at a rival optical shop in Memphis. The fight between Richard and Harrison demonstrates that racism’s power to instill fear in blacks is so great that it can lead two black men who truly like each other to fight each other viciously.
The Hoffmans - White Jewish shopkeepers who employ Richard in Chicago. The Hoffmans treat Richard with genuine respect and care, but Richard assumes that because they are white they will act just like most Southern whites. The Hoffmans help Richard begin his journey toward accepting some well-meaning white people, even though he treats them poorly at the time.
Shorty - The black elevator man in the building in Memphis where Richard works. Shorty is witty, intelligent, and has a sense of pride in his race. However, much to Richard’s horror, Shorty engages in supremely demeaning behavior to earn money.
Falk - A white Irish Catholic worker at the optical shop in Memphis. In stark counterpoint to Olin, Falk does not explicitly profess to be Richard’s friend, but he proves to be a genuine friend by letting Richard borrow his library card to obtain books from the whites-only library. When Falk learns that Richard is moving to Chicago, the quick smile he flashes suggests that he is pleased Richard is moving on to a better life.
Comrade Young - An escapee from a mental institution who suddenly appears at a meeting of the John Reed Club, a revolutionary artists’ organization Richard joins in Chicago. Comrade Young illustrates the vulnerability of the Communist Party to fraudulent acts by individuals.
Ross - A black Communist whom Richard wishes to profile for his series of biographical sketches. Ross is somewhat uneasy around Richard, fearing Richard’s deviations from Party doctrine.
Ed Green - A high-ranking black Communist suspicious of Richard’s interviews with Ross. Green’s rough, peremptory, and authoritative manner alienates Richard.

The Insidious Effects of Racism
Racism as a problem among individuals is a familiar topic in literature. Black Boy, however, explores racism not only as an odious belief held by odious people but also as an insidious problem knit into the very fabric of society as a whole. Wright portrays characters such as Olin and Pease as evil people, but also—and more chillingly—as bit players in a vast drama of hatred, fear, and oppression. For Richard, the true problem of racism is not simply that it exists, but that its roots in American culture are so deep it is doubtful whether these roots can be destroyed without destroying the culture itself. More than simply an autobiography, Black Boy represents the culmination of Wright’s passionate desire to observe and reflect upon the racist world around him. Throughout the work, we see Richard observe the deleterious effects of racism not only as it affects relations between whites and blacks, but also relations among blacks themselves. Wright entitles his work Black Boy primarily for the emphasis on the word “black”: this is a story of childhood, but at every moment we are acutely aware of the color of Wright’s skin. In America, he is not merely growing up; he is growing up black. Indeed, it is virtually impossible for Richard to grow up without the label of “black boy” constantly being applied to him.
Whites in the novel generally treat Richard poorly due to the color of his skin. Even more important, racism is so insidious that it prevents Richard from interacting normally even with the whites who do treat him with a semblance of respect (such as the Hoffmans or Mr. Crane) or with fellow blacks (such as Harrison). Perhaps the most important factor in Wright’s specifically “black” upbringing, however, is the fact that he grows up among black people who are unable or unwilling to accept his individual personality and his gifts. Wright’s critique of racism in America includes a critique of the black community itself—specifically the black folk community that is unable or unwilling to educate him properly. The fact that he has been kept apart from such education becomes clear to Richard when he recognizes his love of literature at a late age.
The Individual Versus Society
Richard is fiercely individual and constantly expresses a desire to join society on his own terms rather than be forced into one of the categories that society wishes him to fill. In this regard, Richard struggles against a dominant white culture—both in the South and in the North—and even against his own black culture. Neither white nor black culture knows how to handle a brilliant, strong-willed, self-respecting black man. Richard perceives that his options are either to conform or to wilt. Needless to say, neither option -satisfies him, so he forges his own middle path.
Richard defies these two unsatisfactory options in different ways throughout the novel. He defies them in Granny’s home, where he lives without embracing its barren, mandatory spirituality. He defies these options at school, where the principal asserts that Richard must read an official speech or not graduate. He defies them in Chicago, where the Communist Party asserts that he will either act as they tell him to act or be expelled. Richard negates this final choice by leaving the Party of his own accord. As we see, Richard always rejects the call to conform. This rejection creates strife and difficulty, however—not because Richard thinks cynically about people and refuses to have anything more to do with them, but precisely because he does not take this approach. Though Richard wishes to remain an individual, he feels connected to the rest of humanity on a spiritual level. Therefore, as an artist, he must struggle to show compassion for communities that say they do not want him. It is a difficult task, but one that he learns to accept at the end of the novel.
The Redemptive Power of Art
When Ella the schoolteacher furtively whispers to Richard the plot of Bluebeard and His Seven Wives, Richard becomes transfixed; he says that the story evokes his first “total emotional response.” This trend continues throughout the novel, as a number of experiences in Richard’s life prove eye-opening in the best sense, enabling him to become excited about his life and to feel that his life has texture, meaning, and purpose. Such eye-opening experiences include Richard’s hearing of the Bluebeard story, his reading of science-fiction and horror magazines, his penning of the story of the Indian maiden, his discovery of H. L. Mencken, his writing of “The Voodoo of Hell’s Half-Acre,” and his decision that he can use his writing to advance the cause of the Communist Party. These experiences all involve reading or some other use of his imaginative faculties, and all bolster his idea that life becomes meaningful through -creative attempts to make sense of it. This is a core idea in the history of philosophy, first articulated by Schopenhauer, refined by Nietzsche, and then taken up by the existentialists, with whom Wright grew fascinated. Indeed, the writing of Black Boy itself, when seen as Wright’s attempt to order the experiences of his life, is closely tied to this idea of the redemptive power of creativity.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.
Hunger
By frequently reminding us 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. Though there are indeed many instances in the novel when Richard does physically hunger for food, he eventually concludes that food is not as important as the other problems facing the world. He asserts that the world needs unity more than it needs to cure physical ills. Both Richard and the world have a more important need: understanding of and connection with one another. Physical hunger is merely a symbol of the larger emptiness Richard’s brutal, inhumane life causes him to feel. Throughout the autobiography he exhibits a strong desire to carve out a richer, more satisfying existence by connecting with the world around him. Just as literal hunger works to undo itself by making a person want to eat, so the motif of hunger works in Black Boy. Richard’s greater emotional and intellectual hunger serves as a sort of literary magnet that pulls us through the story, making us just as anxious to see Richard succeed as he is.
Reading
Throughout the text, Richard seeks out reading with a passion that resembles a physical appetite. Indeed, these two sensations—the desire to read and the desire to eat—are closely allied. At times, this alliance breaks down and the two sensations flow together. In Chapter 5, for example, Richard catches the smell of meat frying in a neighbor’s kitchen while he is reading. From his bookish daydreams, Richard drifts into a fantasy of having plenty of meat to eat. There is also the image, in Chapter 15, of Richard simultaneously devouring food and Proust’s novel A Remembrance of Things Past, hoping to flesh out his body and his writing. It is as if Proust is part of Richard’s weight-gaining plan. This blurring of literary and -physical appetite is most explicit when Richard remarks, “I lived on what I did not eat,” suggesting that, at some level, reading takes the place of food. As such, reading works as a counterpoint to the motif of hunger in the novel. While hunger represents the spiritual and emotional emptiness within Richard, reading represents Richard’s bread and water, giving him the energy he needs to persevere.

Violence
Richard is cursed, beaten, or slapped every time he stands up to Granny, Addie, or other elders, regardless of how justified he may be in doing so. When whites believe Richard is behaving unacceptably in their presence, they berate, slap, or manipulate him; in one instance, they smash a whiskey bottle in his face. When Richard acts out of line with the Communist Party, they denounce him and attempt to sabotage his career. Clearly, then, violence—which here means all the abuse, physical or mental, that Richard suffers—is a constant presence in Black Boy. Violence looms as an almost inevitable consequence when Richard asserts himself, both in the family and in society.
However, violence takes over Richard’s mind as well. Richard learns that he must demonstrate his violent power in order to gain respect and acceptance at school. Additionally, he reacts to his family’s violent, overbearing treatment with violence of his own, wielding a knife against Addie, burning down the house, and so on. More broadly, violence infects the black community in general, whether from within or from the white community’s imposed violence.
Perhaps the most important violent sequence in the novel occurs when Olin makes Richard and Harrison suspect each other of murderous intentions. Even though they acknowledge to each other that they mean each other no harm, they cannot escape the reality that the racist culture demands they fight viciously. One root of this violence between Richard and Harrison is Olin’s feigned friendship toward each of the men. Thus, we come to see that violence in a racist world often goes beyond physical attacks.

Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
Ella’s Infirmity
In Renaissance and Gothic literature, a deformity or some other physical impairment often serves as an outward sign of an unhealthy or evil soul. This kind of symbolism implies that the universe is a sensible place, as an evil soul is rewarded with a mangled body. In Black Boy, however, the opposite is true. Richard’s mother, Ella, is one of the few people in the novel—and the only person in the entire family—who seems genuinely concerned for Richard’s welfare. If anyone in the novel has a truly good, saintlike soul, it is Ella. However, she is beset with incurable ailments and paralytic legs. Other family members, meanwhile, have abundant strength, which they frequently use to beat Richard for trivial offenses. In this context, Ella’s infirmity symbolizes for Richard the unfair and random nature of the universe.
The Optical Shop in Memphis
In the microcosm of the optical shop in Memphis, Olin represents the Southern white racists willing to terrorize black people for the sake of amusement, while Falk represents those Southern whites who genuinely sympathize with black people and who are willing to help them. Shorty represents the black workers who pander to whites but inwardly retain their racial and personal pride. The building’s unnamed porter, with his daily wail about having to work in the same place day in and day out, represents the more embittered black workers of the South. Several Ku Klux Klan members and Jews also populate the office. As such, the Memphis optical shop is a microcosm of racial stratification in the South. Wright concentrates the racial dynamics of the region in one physical space in order to show that people who think they are different from or better than their peers are actually integrally connected to them.