Richard Wright Literary Trajectory Outline

Midterm: Richard Wright’s Native Son/BlackBoy

Part 1: For this assignment the student must write and submit a Sentence Outline. The research question and thesis statement must be included at the beginning of the midterm. Specific references to Native Son must also be included. Direct quotations may not be used in the outline. The Formal Sentence Outline portion of this assignment is to be 300-500 words in length.

• Part 2: In addition, the student will include a Bibliography. The student will locate 3-5 journal articles that will be appropriate for the documented essay on Native Son and/or Black Boy. The sources must be specifically about the topic you have chosen for your documented paper.

How to access academic databases

• Use college and university library networks.
• Search subject-specific databases.
• Ask a librarian for help. Narrow or broaden your search, as needed.

• Part 3: A Works Cited must be included (last page). For this assignment, the only Works Cited entry included will be one for the novel Native Son and orBlack Boy.

Many literary critics identify the major themes in Richard Wright’s Native Son as classism, racial prejudice, poverty and criminality. Similarly, they see major themes in Black Boy as violence, religion, starvation, familial unity and lack thereof, literacy, and the North Star as a guide towards freedom.

• This assignment must be submitted typed, in standard MLA format (double-spaced, 12-pt Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, and proper page numbering, which includes the student’s last name in the header). The assignment must be written in third-person, in present tense, and must contain proper referencing. Please carefully proofread the assignment.

****Carefully read the sample assignment below, BELOVED, as an example of what you must do. This is just the beginning of the sample assignment. I will forward the rest tomorrow.***

BELOVED BY TONI MORRISON

RESEARCH QUESTIONS: What can the reader learn from Beloved’s appearance and how she behaves? More importantly, what can the reader learn later when she disappears and why does she do this?

THESIS STATEMENT: Beloved introduces the reader to the harsh consequences of slavery on African American people and their families, and the novel is an educational tool that illustrates the significance of the social and economic justice that is needed to right a wrong.

SENTENCE OUTLINE

1.Beloved exposes readers to the devastating realities of chattel slavery as it chronicles the life of a Black woman named Sethe

2.From her pre-Civil War days as a slave in Kentucky to her life in Cincinnati, Ohio, (in 1873) as a free woman, Sethe is imprisoned by her memories of the brutality and inhumanity of life as a slave.

3.The quintessential destruction of the institution of slavery is the physical, emotional, and spiritual devastation of identity, and Morrison clarifies this devastation for her readers when she introduces them to the life of each of her characters on the plantation.

4.Morrison reveals the intensity of this devastation which continues to haunt former slaves years after they are declared free.

5.Morrison provides many examples of self-alienation as expressed by her characters who were told by racists that they were subhuman and who were treated as commodities.

6.Beloved therefore reveals that the most destructive of slavery’s consequences is the institution’s negativity on the former slaves’ senses of self.

7.There are multiple examples of self-alienation, including Paul D. who is so insecure that he doubts his ability to be a real man since he is treated as a commodity whose worth has been expressed in dollars.

8.Sethe has been treated so inhumanely that she internalizes a school teacher’s description of her “animal characteristics” when she overhears him talking to his students.

9. Morrison illustrates the intensity of this alienation in her 0ther characters—Jackson Till, Aunt Phyllis, and Halle—who go crazy as a result of being enslaved.