Rebellion For Equality

African-American literature can be said to have come of age in the 1940s with the publication of Richard Wright's Native Son. After that, Richard Wright published his autobiographical novel Black Boy in 1945, which brought him to the zenith of his success.Black Boy vehemently condemns the racial discrimination for its negative effect. This paper focuses on analyses of Richard, the protagonist's behavior and his psychological activities to show how his development is affected by his family, social authority and racial discrimination. Richard Wright, in his molding of the protagonist's image, intends to make use of the black boy's rebellion to arouse African-American's consciousness for equality.In Black Boy, one of the main themes is about the hero's rebellion for equality as a little boy. This paper intends to discuss this theme by analyzing the protagonist's growth from the perspective of developmental psychology combining the African-American history and the context of Black Boy.The contents of this thesis are laid out as follows:Introduction: This part presents a brief introduction to the thesis.Chapter One: This chapter presents a brief introduction of the writer Richard Wright, his works, the plot of Black Boy and its position in American literature.Chapter Two: This chapter probes into the root of African-American's condition of existence and the changes of their sense of survival in an attempt to find the root of Wright's rebellious character from history.Chapter Three: This chapter is the study of the black boy's struggle for equality—upgrading from the subconscious rebellion to conscious rebellion by analyzing his growing experience of pursuing equality in a society dominated by the white.