Comparing the Innocent Criminal in Black Boy, Uncle Toms Children, Nat

The Innocent Criminal in cruddy Boy, Uncle Toms Children, Native Son, and The Outsider It is probably a mere accident that I never killed, Richard Wright commented offhandedly in an interview with Robert Moss (596). After reading several of Wrights works, one can easily understand what Wright means by this statement. In his books relentless Boy, Uncle Toms Children, Native Son, and The Outsider, Wright suggests that white society has transformed black people into criminals. The source of this claim comes from Wrights personal experiences as a Negro in the Deep South. Whether pushed to execration from necessity or for personal fulfillment and self-realization, the protagonists of Wrights works are innocent criminals they know that the ultimate crime for which they are being punished is the crime of being black. Circumstances created by a racist social order place the characters in intolerable positions that coerce them into villainous activities. In his autobiographical nove l, Black Boy, Wright supports this theory using himself as an example. In the tradition of the slave autobiography, Black Boy provides details of Wrights life from early childhood to his arrival in Chicago. As Joyce Ann Joyce says, Black Boy ...is a realistic and poetic account of the hunger Wright endured as a child, his closeness to his mother, the effect of his mothers illness, his problems with his father, his fathers desertion, the violence he experienced from his mothers relatives, his love of lyric and books, his discovery of racism and his developing racial consciousness, his fight against his mothers and grandmothers religion, his scanty education, ... and the development of his individuality... ...chard Wright. unseasoned York Harcourt, 1969. Rpt. in Richard Wrights Native Son Modern Critical Interpretations. New York Chelsea House, 1988. Moss, Robert F. Caged Misery. Saturday Review. Jan. 21, 1978, 45-7. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 14. Detroit Gale, 1980. Skerrett, Joseph T., Jr. Composing Bigger Wright and the Making of Native Son. in Richard Wrights Native Son Modern Critical Interpretations. New York Chelsea House, 1988. Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York Harper, 1944. _____. How Bigger Was Born. Saturday Review. June 1, 1940, n.pag. Rpt. in Native Son. New York Harper, 1940. _____. Native Son. New York Harper, 1940. _____. The Outsider. New York Harper, 1953. _____. Uncle Toms Children. New York Harper, 1936.