Select a work of art and describe the interrelationship of its form and content. Comment upon the impact of technique upon its performance/creation.
Many peers in his field, consider Richard Wright as one of the first black protest writers. In Wright's story "The Man Who Lived Underground," helped change the course of black fiction by exposing the fears, the racial prejudices of a privileged white class and by examining the psychological affects these areas had on the African-American male.
Wright's novel would provide a picture of a nation in crisis.
Taken from an article written by Hal Fletcher, in the August 1941 issue of "True Detectives," Wright's novel changed the course of black fiction. His book was one of the first novels that examined the duality of the black man as a citizen and an outcast in his own country. It also examined the psychological effects of racism on the black protagonist in the book "Fred Daniels."
Portrait of Richard Wright
Kevin and I with Paul Wright at Sonfest 2005
The Ringroad and Joseph Wright CentreForm -
Richard Wright lived in Paris during a time of racial unrest in America and therefore had a clear perspective on the encroaching conditions, which blindsided his culture. Wright echoed the sentiments of James Weldon Johns saying "that black people are forced to look on all things not only from the aspect of the individual citizen but from the view point of a nigger. They have to perform the role of that white people expect them" (43). To this end, Johns' basic argument and that of Wright is that the black man even in proportion to his intellect must maintain a dual personality: one for his own race and one for the white race. Consequently, Wright used a literary device know as the third person narrative and structured his work to be understood by two worlds. To this end, his form...