Native Son

The image that emerges from Richard Wright's autobiographical short stories, Uncle Tom's Children, is that of a lonely and troubled childhood. Born September 4, 1908, near Natchez, Mississippi, Wright was the unwanted son of sharecroppers. His father deserted the family when Wright was five years old, after his mother suffered a stroke. Wright's mother became totally paralyzed when he was ten, and his domineering grandmother attempted to force her religious fanaticism on the boy, who rebelled. At fifteen, he left home for Memphis, Tennessee, and at nineteen moved to Chicago, where he began to write seriously. There, in 1931, he published the story "Superstition" in Abbot's Monthly Magazine and became involved with the John Reed Club and the Communist party. Soon his poetry began to appear in leftist literary magazines such as the Anvil, Left Front, New Masses, and International Literature. While working for the Illinois Federal Writer's Project, he wrote his first novel, Lawd Today, but did not try to publish it in deference to the potential objections of the Communist party. Some of the stories later collected in Uncle Tom's Children and Eight Men (1961) did appear at this time: "Big Boy Leaves Home" (1936) in the New Caravan, "Silt" (1937) in New Masses, and "Fire and Cloud" (1938) in Story.

Wright moved to New York City in 1937, where he wrote a guidebook to Harlem for the New York Writer's Project and reported for the Daily Worker. The successful publication of Uncle Tom's Children and a Guggenheim fellowship allowed him to work on Native Son, which on its publication in 1940 immediately made Wright more widely read than any previous black novelist. Wright's dramatization of the novel, which he coauthored with Paul Green, soon appeared on Broadway, and within a year Wright published the folk history 12 Million Voices (1941) in collaboration with photographer Edwin Rosskin.

At the suggestion of his publisher, Wright turned to autobiography. Black Boy, an account of the author's first seventeen years, was another critical success for him; but embittered by the racism and materialism of American society and encouraged by a trip to Europe in 1946, Wright left the United States and established permanent residence in France in 1947. His next novel, The Outsider, grew out of Wright's involvement with the Temps Modernes group gathered around Jean-Paul Sartre and demonstrated the influence of existential thinking. During the remaining years of his life, Wright published two more novels, Savage Holiday (1954) and The Long Dream (1958); a collection of essays and lectures entitled White Man, Listen! (1957); and three books of travel and sociopolitical commentary, Black Power (1954), The Color Curtain (1956), and Pagan Spain (1957). He died of a heart attack in Paris on November 28, 1960. Eight Men (1961), his unpublished first novel Lawd Today (1963), and American Hunger (1977), a continuation of his autobiography, were published posthumously.

Native Son was the first novel by an American writer to deeply explore the black struggle for identity and the anger blacks have felt because of their exclusion from society. Many black Amer ican voices would echo Wright—James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison, and Maya Angelou, to name a few—in telling the story of an alienated protagonist whose search for self-identity and the freedom it brings must be achieved at all costs. Violence, drugs, and even religion serve as escape mechanisms for blacks who cannot face the fact that society considers them nonbeings.

Native Son's protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is searching for the power that will enable him to break free of the trap society has set for him. In the first section of this three-part novel, Bigger is forced to work for a rich family, the Daltons. Mr. Dalton earns his wealth as a slum lord for black real estate; Mrs. Dalton is blind. Their daughter, Mary, is a member of the Communist party, a fact she conceals from her parents by pretending that the meetings she. at tends with her lover, Jan Erlone, are university classes. Bigger not only chauffeurs Mary and Jan to the meetings but is required to escort them into black ghettos where Wright satirizes their supposed liberal attitudes toward blacks. After one such foray into the ghetto, Bigger helps an intoxicated Mary to bed, thinks momentarily of taking sexual advantage of her, decides against it, but is interrupted by Mrs. Dalton, who cannot see what is happening. Bigger accidentally suffocates Mary in an attempt to silence her and keep his presence secret. Bigger, who often wanted to kill whites, has become a victim of chance. He responds by putting Mary's body in the furnace, but the smoke gives him away and he is forced to flee with his girlfriend, Bessie Mears. When Bessie becomes a burden he cannot bear, he kills her as well. Bigger is arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in a trial that turns into a political farce.

In the novel's last section, while Bigger is waiting execution, Wright works out his themes: that both Bigger and his white captors must understand and take responsibility for the conditions of black life; that Bigger's execution must spark recognition in the legal system that there is no justice for blacks; and that self-identity is the most important element in the search for meaning in life.

Although no specific city is mentioned, the setting resembles Chicago of the late 1930s. Wright points out the sharp contrasts between the black slum world and the affluent world of the Daltons, which has been built at the blacks' expense. Wright sets the particular hardships of black residents of South Side Chicago against the background of the Great Depression, political and economic corruption, and urban blight. Native Son explores the social unrest created by the hard economic times and the attendant interest in radical political solutions represented by Marxists such as Jan Erlone and Boris Max.

In creating Native Son Wright drew upon his memories of nearly ten years' residence in South Side Chicago, sociological studies of Chicago compiled by Louis Wirth, and material taken directly from the highly publicized trial of a Chicago black man named Robert Nixon. Eventually convicted and electrocuted for murdering a white woman with a brick, Nixon was at one point defended by the leftist International Labor Defense. Wright made considerable use of the sensational racist media coverage of the Nixon trial.

The central theme of Native Son is the central theme of much black American writing, the duality of black existence in the United States. Bigger expresses his sense of exclusion as he and his buddies stand idly on a street corner watching a plane fly overhead: "They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like living in jail." As in Uncle Tom's Children, the central movement of Native Son is toward the development of self-awareness. Bigger's development is warped by environmental pressures that make him feel that violence is his only way to escape the stifling limitations imposed on blacks.

Native Son is a psychological as well as a sociological novel, and the three sections of the novel—"Fear," "Flight," and "Fate"—outline Bigger's development. "Fear" documents Bigger's life of poverty and hopelessness with his mother and sister. His entire existence is based on fear, and his greatest fear is to let this fear show. "Flight" shows the expansion of Bigger's sense of self in proportion to the personal danger he faces. He enjoys the independence and power of confusing the white authorities and is exhilarated by his brutal murder of Bessie Mears because, unlike his accidental suffocation of Mary Dalton, it is a consciously willed action that earns him the freedom to "live out the consequences of his actions." In "Fate," the novel becomes more expository. In his lengthy summation, Bigger's lawyer Boris Max argues that all of society shares the guilt for Bigger's crimes, and Max's efforts awaken in Bigger a desire for human trust.

Native Son is not a simple rejection of white America, for the novel shows that behind Bigger's violence lies the hope of acceptance. The real tragedy of Native Son is that Bigger can find no way other than violence to express his potentially healthy desire "to merge himself with others and be part of this world, to lose himself so he could find himself, to be allowed a chance to live like others, even though he was black." In Bigger Thomas, Wright creates one of the most disagreeable characters in American literature, yet he manages to portray him sympathetically. Wright's task is complicated by Bigger's inarticulateness, a limitation that compels the author to communicate Digger's condition through authorial intrusions, symbolism, and an action-filled narrative.

Wright carefully shows how Bigger is shaped by the conditions of his existence. In fact, Bigger's situation is so hopeless that he must avoid recognizing it or be led by self-awareness to violent and probably self-destructive actions: "He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else." Bigger's whole existence is conditioned by fear, and Bigger hates what he fears, including, for a large part of the novel, self-knowledge. The sense of self that Bigger develops after he commits murder is, therefore, too psychologically valuable for him to accept the friendship offered by Boris Max in the final section of the novel.

Bigger, of course, is more than a sociological case study. He embodies the notion, put forth by nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, of the modern man so alienated from traditional mores that he must make his own rules of behavior. In this sense Bigger is a metaphysical revolutionary, intuitively rebelling against the very conditions of his life. He sees a world of suffering, and if he cannot make this world match his innate sense of right, he will imitate its injustice: "He attacked a shattered world in order to demand unity from it." In doing so. Bigger becomes a monster. But Bigger will embrace even this identity because he has lived too long in a world that denies him any sense of self.

Wright's efforts to portray sympathetic white characters fail. The idealistic Jan Erlone and Mary Dalton never escape the shallowness of Wright's treatment. Mr. and Mrs. Dalton exist more as symbols of misguided white liberalism than as individuals. Boris Max is so overburdened with the responsibility of functioning as Wright's spokesman that his own personality is lost.

In Native Son, Wright uses the same combination of direct, naturalistic prose and symbolism that he employed in Uncle Tom's Children. He carefully reconstructs the physical reality of South Side Chicago, using materials gathered from sociological studies as well as from his own experience. He then skillfully invests objects with symbolic significance, a technique that helps him overcome the linguistic limitations of his inarticulate protagonist.

The most striking characteristic of Wright's method in Native Son is the stylistic shift in the last third of the novel. "Fear" and "Flight" are driven by violent, fast-paced action and terse, concrete prose that has been called some of the best suspense writing in American literature, but "Fate" is static, and Wright's prose moves toward the formality of exposition, explaining rather than showing the reasons for Bigger's behavior. This final section is often openly propagandistic, as Wright uses Boris Max to articulate the theoretical basis for Bigger's rebellion. In effect, "Fate" is as much an explication of what has preceded it as it is a conclusion to the narrative.

Called the black version of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, Native Son more closely resembles the naturalistic works of Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis than did Uncle Tom's Children, Wright's previous book. Bigger's willful violence makes him at best an anti-hero, and any hope for improvement seems remote. Wright's careful documentation of Bigger's condition and his reproduction of newspaper accounts are reminiscent of the popular social novels written by John Dos Passes, John Steinbeck, and James T. Farrell. At its worst moments, Native Son echoes the cold, analytical prose of much proletarian literature.

Native Son depicts a world that is psychologically and physically brutal. Wright graphically portrays the emotional trauma that his black characters suffer because of white dominance, and he describes in gruesome detail the violence that accompanies Bigger's anger. Bigger saws off Mary's head; he smashes Bessie's face with a brick; he contemplates rape; he has no guilt for retribution against whites, no sympathy for religion or kindness. He is, as many critics have noted, one of the most despicable protagonists in literature. But Wright's defenders also note that the absence of morality provides a vehicle for looking at the raw reality of Bigger's world—a world that, for a part of his life, was Wright's own reality. In the tradition of naturalistic fiction, Native Son examines the cruelty of nature's indifference, and the evil that occurs because of humankind's intervention. In spite of its positive ending, in which the reader understands that Bigger can die fulfilled because he has found his identity, the novel will offend everyone, which is its purpose.

1. What is the significance of Mrs. Dalton's blindness? Why is it important as both a symbol and plot device?

2.Why does Bigger not want to take Mary Dalton and Jan Erlone to black bars?

3. Why is it ironic that Mr. Dalton gives money to charity?

4. Why does Bigger have no qualms about lying, stealing, and killing?

5. Is all of the violence in this story necessary? What would the novel lose if the violence were eliminated?

6. Why doesn't Bigger accept his mother's religion? Why is he embarrassed when she asks him to pray?

7. Why is Bigger able to express his feelings to Boris Max, the lawyer from the Communist party? What does Max learn from Bigger?

8. Why does Jan Erlone, Mary's lover, think he is responsible for Bigger's actions?

9. Boris Max says that Bigger was not treated unjustly by the court because there was never a chance for any justice. What does he mean by this? Do you agree?

1. Read Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy (1925), or read critiques about that novel, and compare it to Native Son.

2. When Wright moved to Chicago, he worked for the American Communist party. Research the growth and beliefs of the party in America during the 1930s.

3. Explain Wright's concept of "destiny" as it shapes the lives of Bigger, Jan Erlone and Boris Max.

4. Explain Wright's use of irony and symbols.

5. Compare the character and destinies of Bigger and his girlfriend, Bessie Mears.

Native Son is an extension of Wright's work in Uncle Tom's Children, and it is not difficult to imagine Bigger Thomas as a direct descendant of Big Boy from "Big Boy Leaves Home," but Native Son is also a reaction against the sentiment of Wright's earlier stories. Wright himself complained that Uncle Tom's Children had been "a book even bankers' daughters could read and weep over and feel good about." He wanted Native Son to "be so hard and deep that they would have to face it without the consolation of tears." Thus, he consciously worked to toughen his novel and the character of Bigger Thomas.

Although critics generally have felt that Wright's existential writing marks a distinct break from his earlier work, The Outsider has many parallels with Native Son. Cross Damon is, to some extent, an articulate and educated version of Bigger Thomas. Both characters share a pervasive sense of alienation, and each resorts to violence to justify his existence.

The first significant adaptation of Native Son, a dramatization that Wright coauthored with Paul Green, was successfully produced on Broadway by John Houseman and Orson Welles less than a year after the novel's publication. This Mercury Theater production starred Canada Lee.

The first film version was an amateurish production filmed in Argentina and released in 1950. It is notable because Wright himself played the lead role of Bigger Thomas. A controversial film version released in 1986 starred Victor Love, Elizabeth McGovern, Matt Dillon, Oprah Winfrey, Akousa Buisa, Willard Pugh, Geraldine Page, Carroll Baker, and John Karlen. Producer Diane Silver and director Jerrold Friedman fought over the inclusion of Bessie Mears's murder, and Silver's ultimate decision to eliminate Bigger's brutal act caused some reviewers to complain that the film softens and distorts Wright's novel.

Major Books for Young Adults

Uncle Tom's Children, 1938
Native Son, 1940
Black Boy, 1945
The Outsider, 1953