“I went to bed tired and got up tired (229).”
This is the price I pay for wanting to get away.
This is what I must go through if I want to escape.
I want to get away from this negativity.
My criticizing grandmother
My easily angered aunts and uncles
And the cruel and unrelenting negativity bestowed upon me by the south.
Even though I must experience pain to get away from pain
“I would do it. I had to do it (229).”
“My feelings became divided (237).”
“Hope for school was now definitely gone (231).”
My main focus now was to get a job,
And although “I had no hope whatever of becoming a professional man (299).”
I knew I had to do it.
Throughout my life I have failed in the eyes of many.
I will not fail myself, because the thought of doing so is too much to take.
For this reason I wake up early everyday and go help wherever help is wanted.
Hoping that one day I will be able to escape the South.
Throughout Black Boy, Richard is surrounded by negativity and criticism. Even his own family had negative things to say about him. This negativity Richard experiences on a daily basis in the south motivates him to get away. The only way he can escape is to raise enough money so that he can leave. Richard began to work at a young age, and even though these jobs physically exhaust Richard he continues to do them. The negativity Richard experiences truly motivates him into working, even though he would much rather be reading or studying at school.
The poem I wrote is just describing how the negativity Richard has experience in his life is motivating him to work. Richard has never been accepted by the majority of his own family and has been mistreated by the people in the south. The last thing Richard would want to do is fail himself. I believe he feels that if he did not raise enough money to get out of the south he would have failed himself and disappointed himself. This is why he worked so hard, he took job after job so that he would reach his goal and so that he would not disappoint himself.
Although these jobs were hard for Richard to manage he knew he had to do it. I believe he could not live a proper life knowing what he knew while living in the south. He knew he could have a better life elsewhere and the fact that he did everything he could to find that better life is inspirational to me.
