Richard Wright’s Travails of Mann

This chapter, which develops the philosophical approach to “Down by the Riverside” taken in the previous section, shows that Mann not only has the capacity for morality but also acts morally in anticipating his own outcome from the trolley problem that encompasses his family: execution. Mann’s reflective equilibrium, which recalls Frederick Douglass’s autobiographical apostrophe to the sails, foretells both his subsequent act of rebellion and his fatal escape from oppression. Mann begins his final journey in a state of blindness, but his feelings of despair, as his apostrophe announces, realize a stunningly rational vision. This clarity of insight elicits self-effacing wisdom. Mann dies on his own terms: at worst, his self-effacement does not equate to self-defeat; at best, his self-effacement equates to self-actualization.