Richard: Good or Bad?

Although Richard often does rather stupid things, such as burning down his own house and killing an innocent kitten, he isn't a bad kid. Whenever he does something that is considered bad, he feels guilty for what he did. After setting the house on fire, he thought, "I had done something wrong, something which I could not hide or deny... Perhaps everybody in the house would burn! Why had I not thought of those things before I fired the curtains?" (5). Also, he learns from his mistakes. Rather than doing the same wrong over and over, he learns that what he did was harmful, and knows that he must not do the same thing again. After writing curse words on all the neighbors' windows, and being forced by his mother to wash all the obscenities away, he thinks to himself, "Never again did I write words like that; I kept them to myself" (25). He is still young, and because his conscience has not fully developed, he has a reason for acting before considering the consequences.

Bad behavior should be blamed on a person when he or she acts and wishes for harm to come. Behavior should be blamed on environment when the person was influenced by others, when they didn't know exactly what they were doing. Richard's bad behavior was influenced by his environment. He is in fact a smart boy; he learned to count to 100 in an hour and learned to read unusually quickly (23). When he is older, he even pities his father after seeing what he has come to, even after leaving his family (34). This proves that Richard is a forgiving person at heart, and doesn't want harm to come to anyone. However, because of the segregation in Memphis and the lack of attention he receives at home, he was often naughty, even though he truly isn't a bad person.

First Blog

Here is my first blog. I'm sure no one would have figured that out from the title. And I'm sure everyone is amazed at how fascinating my blog posts are.

Well, this sure is exciting. And I absolutely can't wait to go back to school on Monday.

I like sarcasm, in case you haven't noticed.