Right off, it must be made clear that the complexity of the pre-individualistic society is such that love and hostility go hand in hand, as do cruelty and kindness, reward and punishment. Richard never questions his mother's love for him, and although he rarely mentions demonstrations of affection and stresses the negative aspects of his family life, the love between him and his mother is taken for granted. The perversion of this love as an effect of slavery and oppression is what upsets him and serves as the theme of the book.
The family's move to Memphis causes horrifying effects on the entire family. Richard's father becomes alienated and violent and, taking one of his father's careless commands at face value, Richard cruelly kills a kitten. Afterward he is horrified by what he has done, and his horror is underscored by his mother's religious, superstitious nature. She warns him of the dire consequences of taking a life and fills him with a sense of sin and guilt that will never leave him.
In these events lie clues to Richard's reactions to other events later on. For instance, although he is unconscious of the lifetime effect which his father's behavior will have on his psyche, in this one act killing the kitten Richard is responding to that effect. His father's place is restricted. He is a rural black, a man who has been uprooted and transplanted into an urban setting, completely out of his element. His bad temper and impatience is directly related to his personal frustrations, and Richard reacts to him likewise. If his father can't be decent, then Richard will be worse and, in that way, prove his own powers of aggression.
This becomes the model for Richard's relationships with other men throughout the book. He will have no patience with their cowardice and will not fear humiliating them with his own masculinity. He is disgusted by males who allow themselves to be castrated by white society. His father is by no means the only one.
