text's significance

Richard Wright wrote a protest novel to try and bring attention to the conditions he and other African Americans were raised in. By definition of "protest literature", Wright intended to bring about a social change through his writing. Unfortunately, critics generally did not view the piece as artistic because they did not understand it.

The delivery of Wright's message was somewhat skewed by his attempt at a modernistic piece of protest literature (modernistic referring to the movement away from traditional artistic or literary credentials). Since the critics were not used to this approach, they were not keen to the actual focal points he was trying to convey.

Ellison wrote "Richard Wright's Blues" as a critical piece. However he was not critiquing it as much as he was explaining in a straight forward manner the point that Wright was trying to convey. In this way, reading "Richard Wright's Blues" would lead to a more in depth insight to Wright's Black Boy; Ellison allowed the messages to be understood by mostly anybody.

What Ellison did not support, however, was the violence that Wright had gotten into (according to Black Boy). As a product of his childhood and community, Wright grew up resorting to violence quite often. Ellison believed that this was an unnecessary route to take. He offered an alternate route: blues music. He advocated the idea that blues is so filled with cultural importance and soul, engulfing one's emotions into the rhythms of the music was a much healthier way to process anger and other emotions.

Shelby Steele analyzed Ellison's relationship to the blues music in an essay. She put forth the idea that, "by singing of pain and simultaneously laughing at it, one faces their pain in such a way that it is…simply brought under control and deprived of its demoralizing power over the individual, (1976). It is in this way that Ellison appreciates the blues music and wanted to convey in his essay. Instead of dwelling on the anger and letting it build up and taint one's soul with negativity, one could immerse one's self in the melodies of the music and let the negativity slip away.

Ellison articulated this idea because he wanted to continue the idea of Wright's protest literature with one of his own, only added a more productive outlet. He wanted to bring about the change Wright was trying to, only offered an alternative route for emotional outlets.