Richard Wright and his short stories "Uncle Tom's children"

Down by the Riverside

"Down by the Riverside" takes place during a major flood. Its main character, a farmer named Mann, must get his family to safety in the hills, but he does not have a boat. In addition, his wife, Lulu, has been in labor for several days but cannot deliver the baby. Mann must get her to a hospital - the Red Cross hospital. He has sent his cousin Bob to sell a donkey and use the money to buy a boat, but Bob returns with only fifteen dollars from the donkey and a stolen boat. Mann must take the boat through town to the hospital, even though Bob advises against this, since the boat is very recognizable. Rowing his family, including Lulu, Peewee, his son and Grannie, Lulu's mother, in this white boat, Mann calls for help at the first house he reaches. This house is the home of the boat's white owner, Heartfield, who immediately begins shooting. Mann, who has brought his gun, returns fire and kills the man, while the man's family witnesses the act from the windows of the house.

Mann rows on to the Red Cross hospital but is too late; Lulu and the undelivered baby have died. Soldiers take away Grannie and Peewee to safety in the hills, and Mann is conscripted to work on the failing levee. However, the levee breaks, and Mann must return to the hospital, where he smashes a hole in the ceiling at the direction of a colonel - who then directs Mann to find him once everything's over saying he'll help Mann if he can - allowing the hospital to be evacuated. Mann and a young black boy, Brinkley, are told to rescue a family at the edge of town, who turn out to be the Heartfields. Inside the house, Heartfield's son recognizes Mann as his father's killer and Mann raises his axe thinking to kill the children & their mother but is stopped when the house shifts in the rising flood waters. Despite his terror that he might be fingered as Heartfield's murderer and accordingly facing the possibility of a brutal and torturous death, Mann takes the boy, the boy's sister and his mother to "the hills" and safety. There, Mann tries to blend with "his people", hoping he might find his family, until the white boy identifies Mann as the killer of his father. Armed soldiers take Mann away after tribunal with the general and then the colonel he'd helped at the Red Cross. Knowing he's doomed and vowing to "die fo they kill " Mann runs and the soldiers shoot him dead by the river's edge.

Long Black Song

Fire and Cloud

"Fire and Cloud" follows a preacher, Taylor, as he tries to save his people from a wave of starvation. Denied food aid by the white authorities, Taylor must return empty-handed to his church. There he finds a tricky problem. He has been talking about marching in a demonstration with communists, and they have come to visit him in one room. In another room, the mayor and the police chief have arrived to talk to him. Taylor has a history with the mayor, who has done him favors in exchange for his securing peace and order among the black community. However, if the mayor finds out about the communists, Taylor will be in trouble. First Taylor talks to the communists, who try to convince him to further commit to marching by adding his name to the pamphlets they distribute. Taylor gives them only vague answers. He then talks to the mayor and the sheriff, who try to convince him not to march. Again, Taylor is unsure of what to do as he feels that adding his name will threaten not only himself but his community. He successfully gets both groups out of the church without their paths crossing. Then he talks to his deacons. One among them, Deacon Smith, has been plotting to depose Taylor and take over the church.

A car pulls up, and Taylor leaves the deacons to see who is in the car. Whites beat him and throw him in the back, taking him out to the woods. There, they whip him and make him recite the Lord's Prayer, in a move designed to keep him from marching. Taylor must walk back through a white neighborhood, where a policeman stops him but does not arrest him. Once home, Taylor realizes that this beating directly connects him to the suffering of his people, and he tells his son that the march must go on. Seeing that many in his congregation have also been beaten over the night, Taylor leads them in the march through town. He realizes that together, the pain of his being whipped and the strength of the assembled marchers, black and white people in one crowd, are a sign from God. The whipping is fire, and the crowd is the cloud of the fire and the cloud God used to lead the Hebrews to the Promised Land.

Bright and Morning Star

"Bright and Morning Star" concerns an old woman, Sue, whose sons are communist party organizers. One son, Sug, has already been imprisoned for this and does not appear in the story. Sue waits for the other son, Johnny-Boy, to arrive home when the story begins. Though she is no longer a Christian, believing instead in a communist vision of the human struggle, Sue finds herself singing an old hymn as she waits. A white fellow communist, Reva, the daughter of a major organizer, Lem, stops by to tell Sue that the sheriff has discovered plans for a meeting at Lem's and that the comrades must be told or they will be caught. Someone in the group has become an informer. Reva departs, and Johnny-Boy comes home. Sue feeds him dinner, and they discuss her mistrust of white fellow-communists. Then, she sends him out to tell the comrades not to go to Lem's for the meeting.

The sheriff shows up at Sue's looking for Johnny-Boy. The sheriff threatens Sue, saying that if she does not get him to talk, she had best bring a sheet to get his body. Sue speaks defiantly to the sheriff, who slaps her around but starts to leave. Then Sue shouts after him from the door, and he returns, this time beating her badly. In her weakened state, she reveals the comrades' names to Booker, a white communist who is actually the sheriff's informer. Sue realizes that she is the only one left who can save the comrades, and she dedicates herself completely to this task. Remembering the sheriff's words, she takes a white sheet and wraps a gun in it. She goes through the woods until she finds the sheriff, who has caught Johnny-Boy. The sheriff tortures Johnny-Boy before her eyes, but she does not relent or try to get Johnny-Boy to give up. Then Booker shows up, and she shoots him through the sheet. The sheriff's men shoot first Johnny-Boy and then Sue dead. As she lies on the ground, she realizes she has fulfilled her purpose in life.

2.2 Social problems reflected in the “Uncle Tom's children”

“Uncle Tom's children” is the first serious work of Richard Wright. It been write in 1938 year and in this year it award prize on journal “Story Magazine”.

Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful novellas collected here concerns an aspect of the lives of black people in the post slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. Published in 1938, this was the first book from Wright, who would continue on to worldwide fame as the author of the novels “Native Son” and “Black boy”

Living with Injustice

How should one live? This central philosophical question can be separated in to at least two parts. The first concerns the conduct and attitudes morality requires of each of us. The second is about the essential elements of a worth while life; it's about what it means to flourish, which includes meeting certain moral demands but is not exhausted by this. Answering this two-pronged question traditionally falls within the sub discipline of ethics, broadly construed. Philosophers have also sought to explain what makes a society just or good, to specify the values and principles by which we are to evaluate institutional arrangements and political regimes. This is the traditional domain of political philosophy. This essay addresses a question that arises where ethics and political philosophy meet.

Philosophers who attempt to answer the question of how should one live typically abstract away from the concrete sociopolitical circumstances within which individuals make their lives,circumstances that, as it turns out, may be shaped by serious injustices. This kind of idealization has its place. It is often productive to start with ideal theory, where we assume individuals are acting under reasonably just background conditions, using what we learn to better understand what choices we ought to make in our less than ideal, real lives. But there are vexing ethical questions that can be answered only if we theorize them against the background of societal injustice. The question within non ideal theory that I want to take up I show one should live under conditions of serious societal injustice. I am particularly concerned to understand how members of oppressed group sought to live when the prospects for overcoming their oppression are uncertain or dim.

As with ideal theory, answering the question of how the oppressed ought to live is not limited to specifying their moral obligations. It also entails explaining what a life well lived in the face of oppression would involve. Obviously, to fully flourish(on almost any account of what this comes to) is out of reach for the oppressed. Flourishing while carrying the burdens of gross injustice is a barely intelligible idea. But eking out a quiet, minimally decent life--just getting by, as they say--does not exhaust the options.

In an effort to find some me a sure of satisfaction in life under un just conditions, the oppressed may try to acquire material comfort, seek love and friendship, express themselves through art and religion, and attempt to achieve personal goals despite the obstacles that have been placed unfairly in their path. In addition, a life well lived must include living (and also dying) with dignity. This means that although one's life is structured by shame-inducing conditions one nevertheless lives in away one can be proud of. Or, if this is too much to ask, then perhaps we might say that the oppressed should make life choices they would have no reason to feel ashamed of. To put the question succinctly: what would constitute a morally responsible and dignified response on the part of the oppressed to intractable, oppressive conditions? The answer to this question constitutes what I will call the ethics of the oppressed.

Depending on the social conditions that obtain, the ethics of the oppressed gives rise to two types of imperatives. On the one hand, there are life choices one should make when it appears possible to end, mitigate, or evade the injustices one faces; and then there are life choices one should make when freedom or even relief seems unattainable. So, then, there is an ethic of resistance aimed at liberating the oppressed from injustice and an ethic of resistance aimed at living with dignity despite insurmountable injustice.

I am convinced that there is such a thing as the ethics of the oppressed. I must admit however that I have found it difficult to clearly articulate its content--that is, its specific requirement sand permissions. Its exact contours are elusive and complex and not readily systematized. But in this regard I have found it helpful to reflect on Richard Wright's collection of short stories Uncle Tom's Children(1938). These stories shed light on the meaning of this dual-sided ethic, in sights that can be built upon.

A number of philosophers haves ought to better understand our moral lives through the study of literature. There are, however, many perils involved in using literary fiction for ethical reflection (for example, conflating imaginary people with real people, treating the fictional work as evidence for moral claims, believing naively that reading fiction will make you a better person, or falsely presuming a close reading of a compelling character can tell us how we should live). Never the less, I think Wright's stories contain and convey real moral wisdom--I dare say moral truths-- which, despite these pitfalls, I aim to draw out and defend.

Conclusion

Wright played an important role in many of the important social movements of his time. In his autobiography “Black Boy”, he follows him in a journey through the Chicago black cultural Renaissance of the `30s, the Communist Party during the Depression, the witch-hunts of the McCarthy era and the American expatriate community in Paris in the `50s.

This biography urges us to take a fresh look at the often-neglected work of Wright's exile years including The Long Dream and his championing of Pan Africanism and the newly emerging nations of Africa and Asia. By the time of his mysterious death in 1960 at the age of 52, Wright had left an indelible mark on African American letters, indeed, on the American imagination. Wright's life-long belief that "words can be weapons against justice."

The importance of his works comes not from his technique and style, but from the impact his ideas and attitudes have had on American life. Wright is seen as a seminal figure in the black revolution that followed his earliest novels. Bigger Thomas, the central figure of Native Son, is a murderer, but his situation galvanized the thought of black leaders toward the desire to confront the world and help shape the future of their race.

As his vision of the world extended beyond the U.S., his quest for solutions expanded to include the politics and economics of emerging third world nations. Wright's development was marked by an ability to respond to the currents of the social and intellectual history of his time. His most significant contribution, however, was his desire to accurately portray blacks to white readers, thereby destroying the white myth of the patient, humorous, subservient black man.

The list of used literature

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wright_(author)

2) http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/wright/wright_bio.html

3) Rayson, Ann. "Richard Wright's Life." Modern American Poetry. Nelson, Cary and Brinkman, Bartholomew, eds. Department of English, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 2001.

4) http://waldosnotes.weebly.com/uncle-toms-children-by-richard-wright.html

5) http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-uncle-toms-children/

6) Wright, Richard (1998) [1940]. Native Son. New York: Original 1940 edition by Harper & Brothers, 1998 version by Harper Perennial. pp. 471-474, 478.

7) http://www.english.illinois.edu/maps/poets/s_z/r_wright/r_wright.htm

8) http://www.pbs.org/wnet/jimcrow/stories_people_wright.html

9) Polsgrove, Divided Minds, pp. 80-81.

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