A Call For Real Choices: Richard Wright's “Down by the Riverside”

The image above depicts the result of Mann’s choice to have one final act of defiance. This choice resulted in his limp hand trailing in the Mississippi River. 

Richard Wright's short story “Down by the Riverside” highlights the need for social change by exposing how white supremacy dehumanizes Black people and creates artificial scarcity along desperation, which ultimately work to harm both Black and White communities. Many of the themes he introduces relate to the Civil Rights Movement, which was a mass protest against racial segregation and discrimination in the Jim Crow South. Wright uses naturalism to represent the oppressive power of institutionalized racism through an unrelenting mass flood of the Mississippi River. 

Racism just as much as the flood forced Mann to make hopeless choices that continued to spiral out of control, each further compromising his sense of morality and therefore his sense of self. First, he had to choose between accepting a stolen boat or letting his family drown. Then he had to shoot a white man or get shot by a white man at that moment. Again he chose to save his family at the cost of his conscience and future prospects of survival. Then he had to lie about how he got the boat. Later he had to choose between killing the witnesses of his crimes or keeping his humanity intact. He chose the latter, but at the cost of his life. In his last few moments he contemplated shooting everyone surrounding him, but his last attempted grasp of autonomy was to run into the forest before getting brutally shot multiple times and flipped over like a meaningless piece of road kill. All of these loose-loose choices illustrate the impossible positions Black individuals faced as a direct result of race based hatred.

The above image illustrates one of Mann’s first difficult choices, to use a boat stolen from a white man.

Wright demonstrates the false scarcity and avoidable desperation among Black communities created by the Jim Crow South. White Southerners lived by the illusion that human rights were finite. That somehow treating Black people like human beings would strip White people of their privileges. In “Down By the Riverside” black residents are forced into tireless labor to protect the community from the flood. On page 80 Mann quickly tries to gain his footing after being pulled into working as a soldier:

“‘Theres no water anywhere. You hungry?’ 

He was not hungry, but he wanted to reassure the soldier. 

‘Yessuh.’ 

‘Heres a sandwich you can have.’ 

‘Thank yuh, suh.’ 

He took the sandwich and bit it. The dry bread balled in his mouth. He chewed and tried to wet it.

 Ef only that old soljerd quit lookin at me … He swallowed and the hard lump went down slowly, choking him.

Even though flood water consumes his life, Mann’s sandwich sits painfully dry in his throat. This reads as an allegory for how racism creates artificial scarcity of resources despite natural abundance. White people in the South seemed to feel that rights for Black people would strip the racial majority from their rights. However, it becomes clear that rights for one group do not bar another of their rights. Much like there is no shortage of flood water in Mann’s life, there is no shortage of potential freedom if everyone agrees to cultivate it. Unfortunately, Mann does not get to experience freedom, instead he is conditioned into submission in exchange for survival. 

In this passage we also see Mann passively agree with the white soldier, something he was likely trained to do from a young age in order to survive. Eventually, agreeing blindly begins to choke him. Even the act of accepting a sandwich he did not want, and eating it under careful surveillance indicates his internalized compliance to white demands.While he is forcing the dry sandwich down he is acutely aware of how the soldier watches him, another symbol of the crushing and all encompassing power white supremacy holds over his life.

Throughout the story Mann makes futile attempts to succeed within the broken system, but, like the flood currents push against his boat, the tide of society pulls him further and further away from the faint promise of a happy life. However, on page 87 it almost seems as if Mann’s compliance with the current racist system would benefit him:

“The colonel crawled over to Mann and caught his shoulder. 

‘You did well! I won’t forget you! If you get out of this, come and see me, hear?” ‘Yessuh!’

In this quote, Mann’s good deeds seem to be finally rewarded by the colonel, but even then his potential reward is contingent on his survival while forced to traverse a flood to save white people who hate him. This moment contrasted with a later scene of Mann’s final moments, demonstrates the false hopes the Jim Crow South disillusioned Black people with. While Mann begs White people for mercy multiple times, he is never given any leniency. Throughout the short story segregation and racism harm everyone involved. It kills Lulu and Mann, leaving Pewee an orphan and a grandma who outlived her daughter. The oppressive force of racism also left another child fatherless and almost led to the violent death of the remaining family.

In conclusion, Mann’s final hours represent everything wrong with Southern Jim Crow society. The Civil Rights Movement sought to dismantle this artificial system that restricted dignity and access to basic rights for Black citizens. The story ends with a molecule of hope, with Mann’s hand dragging in the Mississippi river, the last sign of his final act of defiance. As a result, “Down by the Riverside” shows that even a character solely meant to embody the terror and horror inflicted on black people can fight back and protest the system that imprisoned him.

Work Cited:

Uncle Tom's Children: Four Novellas (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1938).