ries in which he reads are an escape for him. He wants to fit in with others and be able to be apart of America. He feels the need to go to school because it is his aspiration to become a writer. His reading puzzled his Aunt Maggie for she could not understand why someone would be reading just for fun because they liked it. Intellectual hunger is not the only hunger he felt. He felt many other types of hunger throughout his life. His intellectual hunger came about when his father left his family starving which led to Richards physical hunger. He feels as though it is his job to support and help his family since his dad left. By reading and learning through co-workers he learned how to deal with others, whether they are black or white. He learns the secret of how to survive in his society by watching how others act and react to one another. This secret is what keeps him alive, places him in society where he belongs, and lets him live out is dream of becoming a writer. We also see how each person in Richards life deals with it differently. There are a few people and insience that stick out in my mind especially. The first one would have to be an incident with Shorty. Shorty has dealt with racism his whole life, and he has learned to deal with it as he has grown. We see a great example of how Shorty deals on page 269Shorty is faced with the problem of no money, such as many other southern blacks were, and we see that he is willing to do anything for any amount of money. " You can kick me in the ass for a quarter" (269,wright) As this happens Richard witnesses the whole thing and we can see that he is very disappointed in the way Shorty dealt with the situation. He can’t understand how he can put himself in that kind of degrading position, and Shorty simply answers. " But a quarter can’t pay for what he did to you!" But we can see Shorty thinks differently. Another example of a person that dealt differently with the Racism aro...
