Wright’s Unbearable Rage

Richard Wright’s collection of short stories could well have been entitled with Patrick Henry’s immortal line. Instead, he called it Uncle Tom’s Children. Five stories (plus an autobiographical foreword), all of which are tales of a regular person driven to extraordinary acts of endurance in the face of implacable evil.

Wright is an amazing prose stylist, so these are incredibly well written stories. If you want a violent tale of good vs evil, reading any one of these stories would fit the bill. Perfect for a high school class that wants a model of an old fashioned morality tale.

Actually, the closet approximation to Wright’s stories are superhero comic books. That isn’t a joke. The villains in these stories are straight out of comic books—really evil people doing evil things for no reason other than the fact that they are evil people who like doing evil things. These villains are evil all the way down. If you are hoping that maybe the Evil Villain will show a shred of human decency, you are going to be bitterly disappointed.

The problem is recurring. You read the first story and evil triumphs. Evil triumphs again in the second story. And the third. And the fourth. Are you still hoping Good will triumph in the fifth story? Rather foolish of you. Evil always wins.

As odd as it sounds, there is more nuance in a Marvel comic book than there is in any of Wright’s tales. That is, after all, his goal. You can see the anger dripping off of ever page in these stories. There is no room for nuance here. Wright is waging a Race War, and he will not take prisoners.

In Wright’s war, the heroes are black. So are all the good, noble people. So are all the people who struggle to do the right thing. White characters come in only two varieties: extraordinary evil people and dreamy, hapless communists. The latter never actually do any good, but at least they aren’t just totally evil.

If you haven’t read the book, you might think this assessment is rather harsh. But, you don’t have to take my word for it. Richard Wright thought less well of this book than I do.

I had written a book of short stories which was published under the title of Uncle Tom’s Children. When the reviews of that book began to appear, I realized that I had made an awfully naive mistake. I found that I had written a book which even bankers’ daughters could read and weep over and feel good about. I swore to myself that if I ever wrote another book, no one would weep over it; that it would be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears.

Even bankers’ daughters! He is right. Wright wants to convey his anger and you the Reader are also inevitably angry at the evil people in this book. But Wright didn’t want to focus the anger on the cartoon villains. He wanted those banker’s daughters to feel complicit in the evil, not weep over it and feel good about themselves because they wept. But the stories don’t have enough depth or nuance to ever generate any other reaction than a feeling of moral virtue because you are not that evil.

The most amazing thing about Uncle Tom’s Children is that it was written right before Wright wrote his masterpiece Native Son. Reading these stories, you would never imagine that this author would be capable of turning his magnificent ability to write prose into a vehicle for a book with depth and nuance. Instead of one dimensional evil people, Native Son casts Society itself in the role of the villain. Native Son’s protagonist Bigger is doomed not because of some evil two-bit sheriff, but because the entire society leaves him no place to turn.

What then do we do with Uncle Tom’s Children? Is there anything to learn from a collection of comic book stories written by a master of prose? Yes, but it really isn’t the lesson Wright wants us to learn. In the face of formidable evil, how should we respond? Wright’s anger is one option. In the last story, “Bright and Morning Star,” Wright lays out the other option. At the outset of the story, the protagonist is humming the song from which the story title is taken. Wright rejects the answer of that song. Wright castigates that answer as the voice of the wrong side in the Race War. But, that other answer offers a promise of a reaction to evil that is something other than Wright’s Unbearable Rage.

I’ve found a friend in Jesus, He’s everything to me,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul;
The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see
All I need to cleanse and make me fully whole.
In sorrow He’s my comfort, in trouble He’s my stay;
He tells me every care on Him to roll.

Refrain:
He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

He all my grief has taken, and all my sorrows borne;
In temptation He’s my strong and mighty tow’r;
I’ve all for Him forsaken, and all my idols torn
From my heart and now He keeps me by His pow’r.
Though all the world forsake me, and Satan tempt me sore,
Through Jesus I shall safely reach the goal.

He’ll never, never leave me, nor yet forsake me here,
While I live by faith and do His blessed will;
A wall of fire about me, I’ve nothing now to fear,
From His manna He my hungry soul shall fill.
Then sweeping up to glory to see His blessed face,
Where rivers of delight shall ever roll.