The Fight

Richard Wright was born in a plantation on the day of September 4, 1908, in Roxie, Mississippi. Richard began his writing at the age of fifteen. His first story was titled "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," published in Southern Register in 1923. Richard moved to Chicago in 1927. In Chicago, he joined the Communist Party in 1933 as a revolutionary poet. At the time, Wright had finished his first novel in 1935.

The short story, "The Fight" by Richard Wright, displays how Richard, as a teenager, had an incident in his school years. He explains how he was dreaded and he had anxiety in school because of the other boys and how he wanted to be accepted. Wright wanted to make people know his mentality in school; he was not someone easily picked on. He was secure about going into the school learning about his principal and the subjects of his classes, but he was uneasy about the fellow boys of the school. Richard made it so that he wanted to accepted one way or another. The narrator quotes: "Each new school meant a new area of life to be conquered."

During recess, Richard was approached by a gang of boys. Richard, as a person of his morals, stood his ground without revealing his anxiety. He did that because he wanted to be accepted. The text states: "This was my test. If I failed now, I would have failed at school, for the first trial came not in books but in how one's fellows took one, what value they placed upon one's willingness to fight. "If he showed the slightest bit of uneasiness, the boys would have already made their opinion about him, and showed it to him for the rest of his school life. One of the boys asked him if he was from Jackson, and Richard answered "yes". Then the boy verbally attacked him with a joke, asking "How come they make you people so ugly in Jackson?" Richard stood for his morals, and answered back with another joke, saying that he was ugly too. Richard did that because if he did not retaliate, the boys would have seen a weakness to use against him throughout school. The boy wanted to pick a fight because he thought he could beat Richard. Richard told him he was not picking a fight, but he will if he has to. The boy and Richard got into a verbal argument, which lead into a stand-off about four inches from both of their faces.

Richard Wright's morals is correct to live by. This is so because people bully the seemingly weaker ones to test their strength. Being a new person in school is something to conquer. One has to make a point in order to be somewhere in others' territory. The text states: "I challenged my enemy to another fight, but he would not respond. Fighting was now not necessary. I had been accepted." This text is relevant because it proves how Wright had to fight in order to survive in his school years. Going by this through school years, proves the maturity level of that person. That quote alone, proves how mature Wright was at the time.

davon81792@aol.com
© Davon 2010