38 RAINBOW Vol. 8 (1) (2019) Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies http://journal.unnes.ac.id/sju/index.php/rainbow Construction of American Hunger in Rhichard Wright’s Black Boy Febrian Ramadhani Setiaji, Mohamad Ikhwan Rosyidi English Department, Languages and Arts Faculty, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Indonesia Article Info ________________ Article History: Received 28 February 2019 Approved 25 July 2019 Published 29 July 2019 ________________ Keywords: American hunger, construction, discrimination, structuralism. ____________________ Abstract ___________________________________________________________________ This study aims at explaining the construction of American hunger in Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy. This study is a qualitative analysis that relies on the power of word or explanatory reasoning. The data were collected by reading, identifying, classifying and analyzed using the structualism theories which used in this study by relating to binary operation to see the gap between black and white society. The results of this study were the segregation between black and white people in terms of the treatment, power, and superiority that in the end, it resulted that the black people are being treated different and has no right for freedom. The American Hunger is described in the novel through some events that go in the opposite between black and white people. The tention between them revealed from the different treatment, oppression, discrimination, superiority, and hunger that the black and white people or society experienced. The dominance and the power of the white people had harm the black people in some aspects in their life. Second, American Hunger that was described in the novel was regarded as the desire of the black people when they were living side by side with the white people in America. When the discrimination, segregation, and oppression occurs toward the black people, they satisfied their American hunger by standing agaisnt racial oppression, strengthen the superiority, and against the hunger. © 2019 Universitas Negeri Semarang  Corresponding Author E-mail: mandalistiani92@gmail.com ISSN : 22526323 Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 39 INTRODUCTION Discussion on a social problem will never reach an end. The discussions have been existing and always will exist as long as human being live in the society, because social problems come from the society itself. There are numorous kind of social problems that happen in the society. They are racial issues, discrimination, crime and any other social issue. Racial issue has become the main issue happened between the black and white society in America. Spencer (1985:239) stated that the greatest social problem for American people today is as it has been for hundred years, the presence of Negroes. Black people in the United States have been strugling to obtain their exact status that has not been settled yet, against racial discrimination for freedom and equal right. This case is still being the classic issue that happened in almost all countries all over the world. This issue has led them into inferiority and superiority. Racism can be marked by color, ethnicity, language, culture and/or religion. Indeed, racial issue can also push a sense of hunger about identity (Grosfoguel, 2016). For a human being, this case is pretty commonly happened for a person or could be a group who wants to have an admission from others. Especialy for those minorities who felt as an inferior group. As this case happened between black and white society in America (in the world), there must be a segregation in between those groups. The black society have less power compared to the white ones. In many aspects, the white society or group dominate whether in educational sector, access of transportation, public service, health, and place of living. Lawrence D. Bobo and Cybelle Fox (2003) stated that the basic social processes invoked by the terms race, racism, and discrimination are quintessentially social psychological phenomena; sociologists ignore or downplay this basic insight at the discipline's peril/danger. These concepts concern the meanings of social groupings and how those meanings come to guide patterns of relations among individuals recognized as members of particular groups. They immediately entail the labeling and social learning of group categories, identity, feelings, beliefs, and related cognitive structure. In the real condition happened in a certain time in America, there was an era where a laws was being society’s orientation in living. That laws was called The Jim Crow Laws. In the southern states, The Jim Crow Laws were unanimously being amended and forced upon the inhabitants of those states. The black community was very harshly treated during those times. Even innocuous incidents, like looking a white person in the eye were punishable by law. The punishments were very brutal and included forceful arrest, severe beating and mob- lynching. Moreover, in expressing this reality, the black writer, has to first; explain the society to him and create his art while opposing that society. This event leads to the conclusion that the black society is being treated different and has no right for freedom. Moreover, they do not have such an “identity” of their living. That is why, the black society are longing for a sense of admission. I can simply say they feel “Hunger” of being American. The objectives of this study are first, to describe how the novel is described in American Hunger and the second, to describe how black people in America satisfy their American Hunger In this study, the writer of this final project is trying to reveal the ideology of the author of Black Boy novel written by Richard Wright by investigating and analyzing his writing and taking a look at his biography. The “American Hunger” will be the main case that the writer will be discussing in this final project. In Black Boy, there will be contained Wright’s bitter experiences and have seen the epic way for him to tries to deliver what was going on in the story or it can be in the true life situation. Opression and segregation still become a current issue happened everywhere. In order to get the analysis done, the writer of this final project is using the Structualism Approach. Structuralism, in a broader sense, is a way of perceiving the world in terms of structures. The reason for choosing binary oppositions applied to this final project of Construction of American Hunger in Richard Wright’s novel Black Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 40 Boy is that it is a novel that has been frequently discussed in several writings. Subjects such as racism, discrimination and power have often been dealt with. These subjects are words that obtain a more evident meaning when contrasted to their counterparts. By bringing out these words‟ binary opposition the intention is to make “the mutually defining aspect of words” more prominent and thus highlight the distinction and American hunger in the novel. METHODS This research is qualitative study, which relies on the power of the word or explanatory reasoning. Qualitative data analysis searches to describe general statements about the data that is examined by the writer. Hancock et all (2009) stated qualitative research focuses on description and interpretation and might lead to the development of a new concept or theory, or to an evaluaton of an organizational process. In qualitative data, especially content analysis, the data collection and gathering is simultaneously receiving some kind of interpretation. The reading of the data to follow the criteria to inclusion on the database, leads to initials interpretation and understanding of the concepts, and it depends on the researcher, the analysis can begin while collecting data (Marshall&Rossman, 2006). By this qualitative research will help the researcher to understand the social world in which we lived and why things are the way they are. The object is divided into two kinds of objects. They are formal object and the material object. The formal object is the viewpoint that is seen from the material research or a creation of the knowledge or the viewpoint from which the material objects are investigated Surajiyo (2009:7). The material object is material that becomes a review of the research or as a creation of the knowledge Surajiyo (2009: 5). The material object of this research is the study of a novel by Richard Wright entitled Black Boy. The formal object of this research is the study of the novel focusing on its sequences occuring in the novel, the distinction between two groups (black and white group), and the structure of the novel which depicted the structualism showing the distress that reflected and described in the novel through the characters and sequences. To find out Construction of American Hunger in Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy, the writer analyzes some citations. The items are in forms of words, phrases, and sentences that have been collected from the novel. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS American Hunger as Described in Wright’s Black Boy The binary opposition between Weak and Powerful In Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy, the segregation is happening between the black and the white society. The segregation between them produce intrict and problems amongs the black and the white society. Due to the segregation, it results segment of who is having power over one to another. Based on the data in the novel, the white people have more power over the black that is regarded as a weak society. For this statement, the writer of this final project entitled Construction of American Hunger in Richard Wright’s novel Black Boy gather the data based on the following passages; “I felt that the white" man had had a right to beat the "black" boy, for naively assumed that the "white" man must have been the "black" boy's father” (Wright. 1945:27) “Uncle Hoskins (black) had been killed by whites who had long coveted his flourishing liquor business.” (Wright. 1945:63) This passage contains information that black is oppressed by the white. The white has power to humilate the black folk’s right. It is said also that white man is the black boy’s father, it stated implicitly that a word “father” relates to someone who is powerful and taking control. The white society as a superior has their right to do anything to the black people and it is not against the law. From the passage above, they Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 41 just can kill the black folks who blocked their success. The black people could not do anything if the white people hurt them because they feel like they are inferior to them. They are just like children to the white people (the father). Besides, the father represents someone who is dominant in life such as giving advice, rulling, the head, and powerful. “Though she did not know it, she was now giving me my opportunity to ask from my dog without saying that I did not want to sell her to white people. (Wright. 1945:81-82) Being a “father” to the black people, they are controling their children, in this case is black people. As the owner of the dog, the black people who is represented by Richard had to obey the command of the father. He had to sell the dog with the “father’s price.” But instead of giving up from the situation, Richard, for the first time rebels toward the “power.” He consiously rebels on selling his dog with the cheap price although structually he need to do that to the white people. “I look at the people who had come out of the store; yes, they were white, but I had not noticed it. Do you see what I mean? He asked. White people want you out of their way.” (Wright. 1945:218) “I turned away from him; I had heard that whites regarded Negroes as animals in sex matters and his words made me angry.” (Wright. 1945:222) White people have the power also to do whatever they want toward black people. It implicitly stated that the black people are only regarded as a low object.by saying that Negroes as animals in sex matters only. They only are used for an object of pleasure to white people. Even the white people called the black people as an animal. “I had begun coping with the white world too late. I could not make subservience and automatic part of my behaviour. I had to feel and think out each tiny item of racial experience in the light of the whole race problem, and to each item I brought of my life. While standing in front of white man I had to figure out how to perform each act and how to say each word. I could not help it. I could not grin.” (Wright. 1945:231) Now, Richard already grew as a colored boy who notice about the distinction about black and white society. The words and actions of white people were baffling signs to Richard. He was living in a culture and not civilitation and he could learn how that culture worked only by living it. Misreading the reactions of whites around him made him says and do the wrongs things. He took it as a challenge how to win the white people’s heart by thinking to he had to act in from of white people. Basically, he already thought that from his “clan” regards as a weak one. “.. if there is, I got yet to see some of ‘em. Most of ‘em can’t talk. They just stand with their heads down, with one foot on the top of the other and you have to guess at what they are trying to say. (Wright. 1945:246) The black society/people rely theirself on white people. It is because financially the white man is more good compared to the colored society. “I was now rapidly learning to contain the tension I felt in my relations with white, and the people in Memphis had an air of relative urbanity that took some of the sharpness off the attitude of whites toward Negroes.” (Wright. 1945:246) After the tentions Richard felt in his live, Richard wants to manage his feeling toward the racial issue he faced. By the moves of Richard to Memphis, Richard has to deal with white attitude toward negroes. His concious toward negroes issues might be changed and shifted to the how he has to deal with it instead of fighting back. Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 42 The binary opposition between oppressed and oppressing As it is mentioned that the black people in the novel Black Boy is in the position of inferior to the white society, they have less power against the white people. In the novel it is mentioned also that the white people is the father of the black people. It means that they take control over the children, which in this case is black people, and give command towards them. The white people as the superior, they feel that they have more power, dominance, and authorization towards the black poeple. Therefore, the white people who think they have power over the black people, they are oppressing the black people. “At last we were at the railroad station with our bags, waiting for the train that would take us to Arkansas; and for the first time I noticed that there were two lines of people at the ticket window, a “white” line and a “black” line.” (Wright. 1945:54) “The war itself had been unreal to me, but I had grown able to respond emotionally to every hint, whisper, word, inflection, news, gossip, and rumor regarding conflicts between the races.” (Wright. 1945:85) It is stated that the goverment also play a role in the “discrimination” as well. They differ the public facility between black and white society which insist that there is a gap between black and white society. The discrimination between black and white people derive from the difference of treatment. Besides, Richard also starts to grown an concious about the race conflict between black and white society. He feels something in the society through the conversation and other experiences. “There are no hospital facilities for the colored, and this is the way we have to do it.” (Wright. 1945:116) The white people regard the colored as the people with no feeling and value. They are just like trash. The right of black people is limited because the white folk consider thee black people have lack of education.“..but you won’t get a chance to learn the optical trade here. That’s our policy.” (Wright. 1945:263) “If you don’t take me to my flooe, you will die, the white man said, smiling a little for the first time.” (Wright. 1945:268) “you can kick me for a quarter,” he sang, looking impishly at the white man out of the the corners of his eyes. The white man laughed softly, jingled some coins in his pocket, took out one and thumped it to the floor. (Wright. 1945:269) The black people are not alowed to lear the optical trade. That’s the white’s policy. The right of black people is limited because the white folk consider thee black people have lack of education. Again, negroes regards as a lower position in the society compared to the white. The binary opposition between Full and Hunger It is explained aboves that black people are suffering for inferiority and oppression. As the American’s inhabitant, they feel that they are treated differently than the white people in America. They are wondering what makes them treated differently, and it appears that all of these different treatments because of their skin color, black and not white-colored. Their sense of human being is disturbed by the thinking of treating people different just because of their skin color or race. Thus, the hunger of wanting to be treated the same and to be American inside them is growing above the inferiority, oppression and discrimination that they had. “I did not like to feel tension and fear. I wanted something else, to be human, to be caught up in something meaningful.” (Wright. 1945:248) “Later, after I had grown to understand the peasant mentality of Bess and her mother, I learned the full degree to which my life at home had cut me off, not only from white people but from Negroes as well.” (Wright. 1945:252) Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 43 Richard came awake with a sudden start, remembering the fright and tension that had accompanied his foray into crime. Richard doesn’t feel the peace of the tention surrounding him. He wants to have a normal live in term of the racial distinction. The hunger starts to growing inside him more and more because of him getting bored with the tention and feer that he had. He want sommething else, that he, and other black people, are treated like a norman human and caught up in something meaningful just like the others. Richard’s statement that he learn about life from Negroes also stated that he began to look his group also not as bad as the white. He begins to appreciate and look at the bright side of the black people, which is his clan. “I lit a cigarette and sat for a long time. I had never dreamed that anyone would accept me so simply, so completely, without question or the last hint of personal aggrandizement. The truth was that I had-eventhough I had fought againstit-grown to accept the value of myself that my old environment had created in me, and I had thought that no other kind of environtment was possible.” (Wright. 1945:258) In this passage, “the hunger” that Richard had since he was child such as feeling of acceptance being fullfiled. He thought that in his life, people would not accept him as he was and the environment that shape him made him kicked out from the society and has no value. This refer to the feeling of Richard that the value of him is determined by his old environment that had created in him and he had thought that no other kind of environment was possible to regard him valuable. The white people here are becoming the “creator” of the black people. They can influence the black people’s life so massive by making them their “creature” that can be mold and shaped to be whatever they want. “I felt trapped and occasionally, for a few days, I would stop reading. But a vague hunger would come over me for books, books that opened up a new avenues of feeling and seeing, and again I would forge another note to the white librarian.” (Wright. 1945:297) This passage means that since in the past, Richard didn’t have a chance to have something new in his life due to his race and color-skin. After He got a book to read, his hunger about the knowledge of a “new” world is growing. The chance of black people and white people to educated is very much different one to another. The white people are allowed to read a book at the library, but in another hand, the black people can not do that. A lot of black people can not even read. They are left-behind in the aspect of education, while the white people can easily fill their mind with books for their knowledge. Since in the past, Richard did not have a chance to have something new in his life due to his race and color-skin. After He got a book to read, his hunger about the knowledge of a “new” world is fullfiled. “I did not prefer this kind of relationship with people. I wanted a life in which there was a constant oneness of feeling with others, in which the basic emotions of life were shared, in which common memory formed a common past, in which collective hope reflected a national future.” (Wright. 1945:328) “We two black men sat in the same room looking at each other in fear. Both of us were hungry. Both of us depended upon public charity to eat and for a place to sleep. Yet we had more doubt in our hearts of each other than of the men who had cast the mold of our lives.” (Wright. 1945:397) This passage can be the hunger that the black people had. They are longing for the basic emotions are shared together without thinking about the skin-color. The white people are full of hope in life, while the black people are full with desperation due to the oppression and discrimination that they had. Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 44 They black people were hungry. They depended upon public charity to eat and for a place to sleep. Due to its reputation that black could not have the better job, they could not earn a lot also. Sometimes they have to ask for a food and for a place to sleep. From those explanations about binary opposition in each sequences the writer give, it can be seen that the American Hunger is described in the novel through some events that go in the opposite between black and white people. The tention between them reveals from the different treatment, oppression, discrimination, superiority, and hunger that the black and white people or society experienced. For example, the binary between black and white poeple bears an ideology of which one is weak and the other one is powerful. In this case, the white people play a role as the the powerful side due to their superiority and skin color in America while the black people as the weak group that goes against the racial issue with the white people. Besides that, the tenttion between black and white people bears a clear potrait that as the superior, white people are often oppressing the black poeple, or can be said an inferior. The dominance and the power of the white people had harm the black people in some aspects in their life. Further, American Hunger that is described in the novel will be regarded as the desire of the black people when they are living side by side with the white people in America. The way American-Black people satisfy their American Hunger as described in Wright’s Black Boy The deeper and complex matters due to its complexcity of this novel and the American Hunger that is impacted by racial prejudice of the white-colored society towards the black-colored society is the concern of this chapter. This passage will explain about how the American-Black people satisty their American Hunger. The American Hunger comes from a feeling of being treated unfairly by the white people towards black people. Through the sequences of binary operation between the black and the white people, the gap and the construction of the American Hunger will be revealed. The binary opposition between Weak and Powerful against the racial oppression Through the binary opositon between the black and the white society, the ideology of segregation will be shown and the construction of the Hunger for being American will be visible. “We were now large enough for white boys to fear us and both of us, the white boys and the black boys. Began to play our traditional racial roles as though we had been born to them, as though it was in our blood, as though we were guided by instict.” (Wright. 1945:96) All the frightful descriptions that the black people had heard about each other, all the violent expressions of hate and hostility that had seeped into them from their surroundings, came now to the surface to guide their action. The roundhouse was the racial boundary of the neighborhood, and it had been tacitly agreed between the white and the black boys that the whites were to keep to the far side of the roundhouse and the blacks were to keep to their side. Whenever the blacks caught the whites on his side, they will stoned them, and if the blacks strayed tot the whites’ side, they will stoned the blacks. Because of the differences and unfair treatment that Richard (black people) had, it makes them wanted to proof that they can be equal and as strong as the white people. “I could now sympathize with- though I could never bring myself to approve-those tortured blacks who had given up and had gone to their tormentors and had said: “kick me, if that’s all there is for me: kick me and let me feel at home, let me have peace!” (Wright. 1945:312) While working in Memphis, Richard stood aghast as Shorty had offered himself to be kicked by the white men; but now, while working in Chicago, Richard was learning that perhaps even a kick was better than uncertainty. Richard could understand with the black people who Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 45 desperately give theirself to the white people as long as they would be pleased by them. Even if the black people had tortured. “A line of white girls marched past, clad in in strached uniform that gleamed white; their face were alert, their steps quick, their bodies lean and shapely, their shoulders erect, and their faces lit wth the light of purpose. And after them came a line of black girls, old, fat dressed in ragged gingham, walking loosely, carrying tin cans of soap powder, rags, mops, brooms... I wondered what law of the universe kept them from being mixed? The sun would not have stopped shining had there been a few black girls in the first line, and the earth would not have stopped whirling on its axis had there been a few white girls in the second line. But the two lines I saw graded status in purely racial terms.” (Wright. 1945:356) It has a clear difference between white and black people who worked in the hospital. Their face were alert, their steps quick, their bodies lean and shapely, their shoulders erect, and their faces lit wth the light of purpose, while black girls old, fat, dressed in ragged gingham, walking loosely, carrying tin cans of soap powder, rags, mops, brooms. Richard wondered what law of the universe that kept them from being mixed. He even said that the sun would not have stopped shinning had there been a few black girls in the first line and the earth would not have stopped whirling on its axis had there been a few white girls in the second line. But the two lines He saw graded status in purely racial term. Black people are hungry of a sense of recognition and not put them always in the second place. “Well, it’s this way” he explained seriously. “let the government give every man a gun and five bullets, then let us all start over again. Make it just like it was in the beginning. The ones who come out on top, white or black, let them rule. (Wright. 1945:357) The segregation between black and white made a high tention between them. Negroes who felt oppressed challenge the goverment to fight phisically with white. They satisfy their American hunger by fight against each other to know who is more powerful and stronger. “The problem I faced seemed much simpler one. I had to win the confidence of people who had been misled so often that they were afraid of anybody who differed from themselves. Yet deep down I feared their militant ignorance.” (Wright. 1945:390) The black people are oppressed by the white people. Due to the oppression, the black people are feeling low and weak. It affect the confident of the black people that they are afraid of anybody who differed from themselves. “I had read how these forgotten folk had been encouraged to keep their old cultures, to see in their ancient customs meanings and satisfications as deep as those contained in supposedly superior ways of living.” (Wright. 1945:394) In Stalin’s book that Richard read is shoowing how diversed minorities could be welded into unity, and he regarded it as a most politically sensitive volume that revealed a new way of looking upon lost and beaten people. Of all the developments in the Soviet union, the method by which scores of backward people had been led to unity on a national scale was what had enthralled Richard. He had read with awe how the communist had sent phonetic experts into th vas regions of Rusia to listen to the stammering dialects of people oppressed for centturies by the czars. He had made his first total emotional commitment of his life when he read how the phonetics expert had given there tongueless people a language, newpapers, intitutions. And further, the white people feel the superiority toward the black people. They feel like going against the old custom and culture of the life with infeority. Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 46 The binary operation between Oppressed and oppressing for strenghten the superiority As it is mentioned that the black people in the novel Black Boy is in the position of inferior to the white society, they have less power against the white people. The white people feel that they have more power, dominance, and authorization towards the black poeple. Therefore, the white people who think they have power over the black people, they are oppressing the black people. Through the concept of oppressing of one to another, the idea of American Hunger will be presented through the sequences of binary operation. “This was as close as white terror had ever come to me and my mind reeled. Why had we not fought back, I asked my mother, and the fear that was in her made her slap me into silence.” (Wright. 1945:64) By the death of uncle Hoskins, there were no funeral, music, and period of mourning. There were only silence, quiet weeping, whispers, and fear. Richard did not know when or where uncle Hoskins was burried. Aunt Maggie was not even allowed to see his body nor was she able to claim any of his assets. Uncle Hoskins had simply been plucked from our midst and his family had fallen on their face avoid looking into the white-hot face of terror that they knew loomed somewhere above them. The black has an assumption that they are weak. They are tought to not fighting back, because they are considering themselve as a low and has no power compared to the white folks. “I knew that southern white hated the idea of Negroes leaving to live in places where the racial athmosphere as different.” (Wright. 1945:300). It implies that the white people doesn’t want to the black people move to another area where the racial athmosphere is different because they wil be changing in their thinking and it will effect that the white couldn’t let him down again. “In order to escape the racial attack that went to the roots of my life, I would have gladly accept any way of life but the one which I found myself.” (Wright. 1945:312) “I would have agreed to live under a system of feudal oppression, not because I preffered feudalism but because I felt that feudalism made use of a limited part of a man, defined him, his rank, his function in society.” (Wright. 1945:312) “While working in Memphis I had stood aghast as Shorty had offered himself to be kicked by the white men; but now, while working in Chicago, I was learning that perhaps even a kick was better than uncertainty.” (Wright. 1945:312) Richard give up with the bad treatment that he had during his lifetime about racial attack. Because Richard gives up with the social system of racial opression, he starts to think of feudial opression in which a man has more power. As a result, Richard, as a man, has a power also in spite of his race skin which is black. Richard starts to be tired with all the uncertainty about the black being opressed and disgraced by the white people. He mentions about a “kick” is better than the uncertainty. “From the accidental pain of southern years, from anxiety that I had sought to avoid, from fear that had been too painful to bear, I had learned to like my uninterminent burden of feeling, had become habituated to acting with all of my being, had learned to seek those areas of life, those situations, where I knew that events would complement of my own inner mood.” (Wright. 1945:332) Richard spent his nights reading Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past, admiring the lucid, subtle but strong prose, stupefied by its dazzling magic, awed by the vast, delicate, intricate, and psychological structure of the Frenchman’s epic of death and decadence. But it crusned Richard with hopelessness, for he wanted to write of the people in his environment with an equal thoroughness, and the burning example before Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 47 his eyes made him feel that he never could. His ability to endure tension had grown amazingly. The suffering moments that Richard had in the Southern years made and shaped him into a person who was aware with racial oppression. “A vote was taken in the early hours of the morning by a show of hands, and I was elected. I had been a member of the club for less than two months and did not fully understand the purposes of the organization. Later I learned what happened:the writers of the club had decided to “use”me to oust the painters, who were party members, from the leadership of the club. Without my knowledge and consent, they confronted the members of the party with a Negro, knowing that it would be difficult for Communist to refuse to vote for a man representing the largest single racial minority in the nation, inasmuch as Negro equality was one of the main tenets of Communism.” (Wright. 1945:379) It would be difficult for Communist to refuse to vote for a man representing the largest single racial minority in the nation, inasmuch as Negro equality was one of the main tenets of Communism means they are as minority would be beneficial for them in term of the voice. The binary operation between full and hunger against the hunger It can be concluded that black people are suffering for inferiority and oppression. They are being treated differently than the white people in America. They are wondering what makes them treated differently, and it appears that all of these different treatments because of their skin color, black and not white-colored. Their sense of human being is disturbed by the thinking of treating people different just because of their skin color or race. Thus, the hunger of wanting to be treated the same and to be American inside them is growing above the inferiority and oppression that they had. “Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days. But I could not conquer my sense of guilt, my feeling that the white men around me knew that I was changing, that I had begun to regard them differently.” (Wright. 1945:295) The hunger of books represents that Richard is longing to be educated and knowledge. In this case, he mentions that now he had begun to regard white man differently. He shows the hunger of books in order to satisfy his American Hunger to be educated and enlarge his point of view or perspective towards racial discrimination. “I even dreamed of organizing secret groups of black to fight all whites.. and if the blacks would not agree to organize, then they would have to be fought.” (Wright. 1945:313) To solve the tangle of balked emotion, Richard loaded the empty part of the ship of his personality with fantasies of ambition to keep it from the toppling over into the sea of senselessness. Like any other American, he dreame of going into business and making money. Not only that, he dream of working for a firm that would allow him to advance until he will reach an important position. And further, Richard initiates to organizing a fight back against white people because of black’s desperation toward racial opression they had. “Perhaps it would be possible for the Negro to become reconciled to his plight if he could be made to believe that his sufferings were for some remote, high, sacrificial end; but sharing the culture that condemns him, and seeing that a lust for trash is what blinds the nation to his claims, is what sets storms to rolling to his soul.” (Wright. 1945:321) Richard thinks that the essence of the irony of the plight of the negro in America is that he is doomed to live in isolation while those who condemn him seek the basest goals of any people on the face of the earth. He starts to thinking about revolutionary in their mental health of Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 48 considering what they all have been experiencing is only the way they behave when white people treating them. “Hungry for insight into my own life and the lives about me, knowing my fiercely indrawn nature, I sought to fulfill more than my share of all oblligations and responsibilities, as though offering librations of forgiveness to my environment.” (Wright. 1945:333) Richard, as a black and is oppressed by white society is hungry about the insight about what all happened with the black people that are oppressed by white people. Now he is thinking about the liberations of forgiveness to their environmnet for what is happening toward the black. Indeed, the more his emotions claim his attention, the sharper-as though in ultimate self- defense-became his desire to measure accurately the reality of the objective world so that he might more than meet its demands. “I feel that negroe could not live a full, human life under the conditions imposed upon him by America; and I felt too, that America, for different reasons, could not live a full, human life. It seemed to me, then, that if the Negro solved his problem alone. I felt certain that the Negro could never solve his problem until the deeper problem of American civilization had been faced and solved. And because the Negro was the most castout of all the outcast people in America, I felt that noother group in America could tackle this problem of what our American lives meant so well as the Negro could.” (Wright. 1945:350) This passage shows that between black and white people there is segregation in living. Negroes, as a native America crawling for Identity. The black poeple in America need the problem of American civilization had been faced and solved. And because the Negro was the most castout of all the outcast people in America. “Negroes are told in a language they can not possibly misunderstand that their native land is not their own; and when they, acting upon impulse which they share with whites, try to assert a claim to their birthright, white retalite with terror, never pausing to consider to consequences should the Negroes give up completely.” (Wright. 1945:355) This passage shows that black people are hunger for the identity. The identity here means the their native land is not their own; and when they, acting upon impulse which they share with whites, try to assert a claim to their birthright, white retalite with terror, never pausing to consider to consequences should the Negroes give up completely. White people in America has power and higher degree in social status that make them superior in the society and environment. “My life as a Negro in America had led me try to hide it from myself— that the problem if human unity was more important than bread, more important than physical living itself; for I felt that without a common bond uniting men, without a continuous current of shared thought and feeling circulating through the social system, like blood coursing through the body, there could be no living worthy of being called human.” (Wright. 1945:374) Negro potraits the humanity issue is more needed compared to bread. It implies that humanity in the case of racial issue is transforming them into people who are hungry for freedom and the feeling of accepted. He hungered to share the dominant assumptions of his time and act upon them. he does not want to feel like an animal in the jungle, that the whole world is alien and hostile. He does not want to make individual war or individual peace. So far, he had managed to keep humanly alive through transfusions from books. In his concrete relations with others he had encountered nothing to encourage him to believe in his feelings. It has been by denying what he sees with his eyes, disputing what he feels with his body, that he managed to keep his identity intact. Rainbow: Journal of Literature, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, Vol. 8 (1) (2019) 49 “But it seemed to me that here at last in the realm of revolutionary expression was where Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role.” (Wright. 1945:374) Negro potraits the humanity issue is more needed compared to bread. It implies that humanity in the case of racial issue is transforming them into people who are hungry for freedom and the feeling of accepted. “Well, what had I got out of living in the city? What had I got out of living in the South? What had I got out of living in America? I paced the floor, knowing that all I possessed were words and dim knowledge that my country had shown me no examples of how to live a human life. All my life I had been full of a hunger for a new way to live.” (Wright. 1945:452) All in the black people’s life had been full of a hunger for a new way to live. They are wondering about all the things they experienced so far during with the racial and humanity issue exist amongs the people in America. “Yes, the whites were as miserable as their black victims, I thought . if this country can’t find its way to a human path, if it can’t inform conduct with a deep sense of life, then all of us, black as well as white, are going down the same drain.” (Wright. 1945:453) The hunger of sense of humanity in life had haunted both black and white people in America. “I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of inexressibly human.” (Wright. 1945:453) Humbly now, with no vaulting dream of achieving a vast in unity, he wanted to try to build a bridge of words betwen him and the world outside, that the world which is so distant and elusive that it seems unreal. The hunger of black people for life that gnaws in them all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of inexressibly human. CONCLUSION From this study, it can be concluded that: First, the American Hunger is described in the novel through some events that go in the opposite between black and white people. The tention between them reveals from the different treatment, oppression, discrimination, superiority, and hunger that the black and white people or society experienced. The dominance and the power of the white people had harm the black people in some aspects in their life. Second, American Hunger that is described in the novel is regarded as the desire of the black people when they are living side by side with the white people in America. When the discrimination, segregation, and oppression occurs toward the black people, they satisfy their American hunger by standing agaisnt racial oppression, strengthen the superiority, and go against the hunger. REFERENCES Alexander, M. (2010). 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