This paper attempts to fathom out the various symbols which Richard Wright uses to convey the theme of social plight in his works of art. To do so, his Uncle Tom’s Children, Native Son and Black Boy have been selected as a corpus to identify and analyze the most important symbols of social plight. Reverting to Derrida’s deconstructionist concept of différance in language analysis, the paper shows that Wright makes use of powerful symbolism such as mental and physical disorders, beasts and specific motifs, all bagged in a coherent symbolic whole, to depict the black plight as social suffering, thus expressing the various ways in which Blacks are faced with social plight due to unbearable oppression.

symbolism, social plight, Richard Wright