Motiv: Umherirren in der Stadt und Motiv: Literatur in der Literatur

Motiv: Umherirren in der Stadt
Aus: Richard Wright: Black Boy. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. 288 Seiten

"When I heard the dishes rattling at the table, I opened the door and ran down the walk to the street. Dusk was falling. Doubt made me stop. Ought I go, back? No; hunger was back there, and fear. I went on, coming to concrete sidewalks. People passed me. Where was I going? I did not know. The farther I walked the more frantic I became. In a confused and vague way I knew that I was doing more running away from than running coward something. I stopped. The streets seemed dangerous. The buildings were massive and dark. The moon shone and the trees loomed frighteningly. No, I could not go on. I would go back. But I had walked so far and had turned too many corners and had not kept track of the direction. Which way led back to the orphan home? I did not know. I was lost." S. 39

The gateway to a forbidden and enchanting land – Motiv: Literatur in der Literatur
Aus: Richard Wright: Black Boy. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. 288 Seiten

Not to know the end of the tale filled me with a sense of emptiness, loss. I hungered for the sharp, frightening breath-taking, almost painful excitement that the story had given me, and I vowed that as soon as I was old enough I would buy all the novels there were and read them to feed that thirst for violence that was in me, for intrigue, for plotting, for secrecy, for bloody murders. So profoundly responsive a chord had the tale struck in me that the threats of my mother and grandmother had no effect whatsoever. They read my insistence as mere obstinacy, as foolishness, something that would quickly pass; and they had no notion how desperately serious the tale had made me. They could not have known that Ella's whispered story of deception and murder had been the first experience in my life that had elicited from me a total emotional response. No words or punishment could have possibly made me doubt. I had tasted what to me was life, and I would have more of it, somehow, someway. I realized that they could not understand what I was feeling and I kept quiet. But when no one was looking I would slip into Elia's room and steal a book and take it back of the barn and try to read it. Usually I could not decipher enough words to make story have meaning. I burned to learn to read novels and I tortured my mother into telling me the meaning of every strange word I saw, not because the word itself had any value, but because it was the gateway to a forbidden and enchanting land.
S. 48-49

Motiv: Literatur in der Literatur –

Motiv: Umherirren in der Stadt –

Rezension: Black Boy