Richard defines himself as a black boy in the Jim Crow South, but he is also open to distinct ideas and interpretations to expand his knowledge of what exactly that means for him. . Richard's writings reflect his experiences, direct and indirect, such as that of Bigger during his incarceration, and that of himself during the discovery of real segregation and unequal rights. The theme of Black Boy is paradoxical because we don't know if he will ever discover the secrets to becoming a black man, and not just a black man, but a black man who grew up in the middle of all the strife. The book shares the violence but in the most informative way; without the violence, the true South would not have been expressed in the novel, and as a reader you would not be able to grasp his emotions on the topics he presents about himself, such as how he had suffered, but his suffrage was caused by the suffrage of his own mother, etc. . A man is not born a slave, but a man becomes a slave. Richard had become a slave to society by trying to do everything right, but also trying to escape the South and head North as if the South was still a branch of slavery and