The story’s strength lies in revealing through three dialogues the psychological dilemma of the protagonist as opposing groups demand his support. As the communists promised, the poor whites join the blacks in the march, which forces the white authorities to release food to those facing starvation. Instead of intimidating them, this suffering converts them to open confrontation. When two communist agitators begin pushing Taylor to lead a mass demonstration against the local government, white officials have Taylor kidnapped and beaten, along with several deacons of his church. No matter how Taylor pleads for relief, the local white officials tell him to wait and see if federal aid may be forthcoming. Taylor’s people are starving because the white people, who own all the land, have prohibited the blacks from raising food on it. The situation of the story no doubt reflects Wright’s early experience when his sharecropper father was driven off the plantation. Early in the story Taylor exclaims “The good Lawds gonna clean up this ol worl some day! Hes gonna make a new Heaven n a new Earth!” His last words, however, are “Freedom belongs t the strong!” Strength of numbers proves more effective and appropriate for getting relief from the bigoted white establishment than all his piety and loving kindness. Instead of turning the other cheek after being humiliated and beaten by white men, he embraces the methods of his Marxist supporters, meeting oppression with mass demonstration. The final triumph of Reverend Taylor is that he puts aside the conciliatory attitude which was part of his religious training and becomes a social activist.

Although he recognizes it as contributing to the quiet nobility of the hero, it also prevents Taylor from taking effective social action when his people are literally starving. Wright’s attitude toward religion, however, is ambivalent.

His protagonist, Reverend Taylor, is representative of the “old Negro,” who has withstood centuries of oppression, sustained by hard work on the land and humble faith in a merciful God. This use of dialect emphasizes the relative lack of sophistication of rural blacks. Wright reproduces faithfully the southern black dialect in both conversation and internal meditations. Unlike the later works concerning black ghetto experience, “Fire and Cloud” has a pastoral quality, recognizing the strong bond of the southern black to the soil and the support he has drawn from religion. O’Neill made a radio adaptation of the story after it appeared in American Scenes. It won first prize in the 1938 Story magazine contest which had more than four hundred entries, marking Wright’s first triumph with American publishers. “Fire and Cloud” in Uncle Tom’s Children is perhaps the best representative of Richard Wright’s early short fiction.

Burden of Solace by Richard L. Wright