Artistic Attributes
Throughout the story “Big Boy Leaves Home,” (1938) and “Almos’ A Man,” (1961) Richard Wright uses several onamonapias. In ‘Big Boy Leaves Home” the word “crack” is used a total of 10 times (Figure 1, to the left) to evoke panic, just like in slave narratives it was used to describe the sound of a whip, another weapon of pain and fear. The word is geographically signifying as it is describing a gun, because the greatest percentile of gun owners are located in the South according the Figure 2 below.
Figure 2. |
Figure 1 |
At the very end of “Almos’ A Man”, Wright does this again, but with a different onamonapia.
“He fired again. Blooooom! He smiled. Blooooom! Blooooom! Click, click.”
Wright’s use of different sounds illustrated through these words evoke a sense of fear to the audience(readers). He portrays the realistic violence of situations that the characters (based on real people) felt when they heard the sound of a gunshot, creating an unnerving atmosphere.