Richard hungers for many things in his life. Some of these are hunger for food which leads to hunger for money and hunger for love and learning. Richard hungers for food, which he says most often that he goes without. "There were hours when hunger would make me weak, " (Wright 127). This hunger for for food leads him to need a job to buy food. He has many jobs throughout the course of the novel. One of them is a paper route by a newspaper that supported the KKK, but he didn't realize it when he was selling it. Another job that he had was working for a family before school and after school by milking cows and cleaning and such. He also had many other jobs that helped his satisfy his hunger for food.
Richard also had a hunger for love from his family. Ever since the beginning of the novel we know that his family was very abusive and they did not raise him in a good enviornment. For example when his Uncle Tom and his family come to live at granny's house, Uncle Tom's family avoids him and Richard feels the abusive disregard for him and he hungers to be loved. I think one of the reasons why he wrote the paper that he wrote that was published was because he wanted to be accepted and loved by his family, but he was also seeking education and learning. It seems that through the many times that Richard moves he is continuously in school and he seems to hunger for learning. At the begining of the novel when Richard and his brother and mother are living at Granny's house with that one girl, Richard hungers to learn how to read and he begs her to teach him how to read. Richard hungers for food which leads him to look for many jobs, he also hungers for love from his family and learning.