Black Boy - Chapter 4

In chapter 4 the main idea that Richard struggles with is religion. Growing up in a religious family, which includes his Aunt Addie being a schoolteacher at a religious school, he often is the outcast when it comes to his feelings about religion. The whole family, especially Richard's grandmother, believe that Richard has a problem and needs to have religious help. Therefore, during a revival, Granny uses this as her last chance to sell Richard on the idea of religion. Richard believes that the concept of religion is nice and at times he listens to what has to be said in church (pg. 112). However, he is much more interested in the church elder's wife than the words of God (pg. 113). Whenever Richard leaves the church he often thinks outside that what they are saying may sound nice, but cannot be true at all. On his last attempt to please Granny he tells her, "if I ever saw an angel like Jacob did, then I'd believe" (pg. 117). Granny unfortunately misunderstands him and thinks that he had said that he'd seen an angel. She gets excited and tells that elder. Richard then embarrasses her by calling her out on her misunderstanding and thus forcing him to promise to pray every day, even though he does not believe in praying.

Because he know has prayer hour, Richard ends up using this time to write a story about an Indian girl. This is the first time in Black Boy that Richard talks about him writing for fun, possibly as an insight on how he began to start writing.