"Down by the Riverside" as part of the civil rights movement
Throughout Richard Wright's "Down by the Riverside", the main character Mann is vexed by one tribulation after another. There are two ultimate causes of his misfortune: the flood and the racism of the white people who are in positions of power. Those two amorphous antagonists conspire to force Mann to run an unending gauntlet, finally terminating in his death. By putting the protagonist in an unenviable position to begin with and then showing how Jim Crow erases any hope of escape, Wright is condemning it and calling for Black people to be treated equally and not as merely an exploitable group of semi-human creatures. Richard Wright Mann's first challenge is the flood. He needs to escape from his house and the rising waters that are swirling around it while also getting his pregnant wife to the hospital. He starts on his way out at night, with the storm opposing him at every turn, eventually reaching a home where he hopes to be able to call the hospital. Here racism...