Reflecting Upon Native Son By Richard Wright

Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, to a poor family on a plantation in Mississippi. His father was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother was a well-educated teacher. Due to his family’s poverty they were forced to move to Memphis. When Wright was five years old, his father left his family for another woman, and his mother was forced to leave her job as a school teacher and do domestic work to provide for her family. As Wright grew up, he became involved with the Communist Party, and in 1940 he published Native Son. This success of Wright’s book made the black community proud of him, but it also brought a lot of uncomfortable feelings. They felt that the main character, Bigger, portrayed a stereotypical, harsh, black man the

The novel Native Son by Richard Wright tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young black man living on the South Side of Chicago. Due to the severe oppression and racism he has faced throughout his entire life, the reader is shown how Bigger has no control over his life and is driven to extreme actions as a result of his fear and anger. Wright displays how media and popular culture in the novel serve as powerful driving forces in emphasizing the destructive racial prejudices that are present in society as a way to solidify these ideas in the minds of its members. Through presenting the media in such a light, Wright criticizes how the media inaccurately presents information to the public

Many times in novels, authors will use conflicts to strengthen the plot and to give more depth to the story that they are penning. There are four main plot conflicts that authors have to choose from: man versus nature, man versus society, man versus man, and finally, man versus self. Authors, many times, will use only one or two of these conflicts but in the novel, Native Son, all four conflicts are used to some extent. In this novel, Richard Wright, does a superb job of meticulously blending all four conflicts together to form a well-rounded novel about a black man in 1920 's Chicago.

Native Son by Richard Wright is about a black man, Bigger Thomas, who is becomes the chauffeur of the Daltons, a rich white family, and accidently kills the daughter, Mary. He attempts to cover his crime by putting the blame on someone else, but he is eventually caught and sentenced to death. Bigger deceives in an attempt avoid the consequences he knows the white world will deliver to him with and this deception contributes to Wright’s message of what racism does to the oppressed and additionally puts Wright’s communist party in a positive light.

In his most famous novel, Native Son, Richard Wright's female characters exist not as self-sufficient, but only in relation to the male figures of authority that surround them, such as their boyfriends, husbands, sons, fathers, and Bigger Thomas, the protagonists. Wright presents the women in Native Son as meaningless without a male counterpart, in which the women can not function as an independent character on their own. Although Wright depicts clearly the oppression of Blacks, he appears unconscious of creating female characters who regardless of race, are exploited and suppressed. Their sole purpose in the novel is to further the story by putting Bigger in new and more dangerous situations by

In Richard Wright’s Native Son, the book is split into three books. The first 2 books focus mainly on the suspense and tensions rising within Bigger’s life and finally in the last book he dies. The dramatic conflict of Native Son takes place chiefly within the mind of Bigger Thomas, who lives in a world of whites, blacks , or reds. To Bigger all of life is conflict and issues that is defined by the color of your skin with the whites being higher up. The tensions within the book can be comparable to fire and ice as each element possess traits which can be seen as metaphors within the novel Native son by Richard Wright and his essay of “How Bigger was Born”.

Hatred for white society was a strong theme among the African American community during the 1950s. These emotions were conveyed through different platforms of the time, ranging from art and music, to articles and books. But James Baldwin, a popular African American writer during this time period, does not obsess over this subject that was so passionately conveyed by so many people like him. Instead of preaching about his hatred for white America, Baldwin utilizes his story of his childhood as well as his early adulthood to illustrate the destructive nature of the African Americans society’s hatred for white society in the very well known essay, “Notes of a Native Son.”

Richard Wright, wrote the fictional novel Native Son, using three intellectual forces, which include: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Communism. He uses these forces, along with racist ideology, to shape the life of a young black male, Bigger, living in the ‘Black Belt’ of Chicago in the 1940’s. Wright refers to the ‘Black Belt,’ as a ‘black world’ where violence is directed towards other American Americans, and warns that this violence will be aimed at white people. Bigger, is used to depict the criminal actions that come along with living in racial confinement under the fear of white people during this time.

James Baldwin and Brent Staples are some of the many individuals who have shaped the ideas of black culture and understood the reality of what many black people go through. James Baldwin is a zealous author who shares his experiences with being black in America, writes about the relationship he has with his father, and even discovers characteristics about himself and in the environment around him. In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin puts an end to the black stereotypes from the American society and rather reproves them. Brent Staples, a known author and reporter of New York, tells us his side of his struggles as a black man. In Just Walk By:Black men and Public Space, Staples pinpoints the perspective and misjudgements that the majority of black people face. Through diction and syntax, Baldwin illustrates an angry and reflective tone while Staples uses a softer and humorous attitude which highlights white privilege and the injustice of Black oppression.

According to Frederick Douglass, “it was the blood-stained gate, the entrance to the hell of slavery, through which I was about to pass. It was a most terrible spectacle. I wish I could commit to paper the feelings with which I beheld it (p.4).” Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison literatures examine the stigma of slavery, and the perceptions of its dangers. They illustrate what life was like and the mental as well social impact it had on enslaved African-Americans and their life after gaining freedom. Richard Wright convinces his audience in Black Boy that he was tired of the limitations and outcries in the South “I was not leaving the South to forget the South, but so that some day I might understand it, might come to know what its rigors had done to me, its children (284).” Alice Walker obtains her readers attention by transforming young women into their own characters with a voice using spiritual guidance. In Native Son, Bigger has achieved is lost after being apprehended and brought into captivity, as he transitions back into silence and passivity and begins to recover only in his final confrontation, whereas Douglass in the same prevailing convention, only heals after the regaining of his freedom. Through these literatures, and many others, African-Americans find multiple ways to alleviate and recover from the intensity of undesired bondage and bigotry.

The story of Native Son by Richard Wright is one of the greatest pieces of literature which functioned as a massive wake-up call for the American public. According to Irving Howe, when "[t]he day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever." Native Son was written at a time when blacks were stereotyped as brutal and uncivilized. Wright depicts his community’s suffering, poverty and denial of rightful recognition in his works. Wright’s Native Son not only represents history with sociopolitical factors, but also has excellent literary value.

The book Native son is based in the 1930s about a black man named Bigger Thomas and his troubles as a black person in this bad time of segregation and oppression. In this debate we discussed about the murder of Mr.Dalton’s daughter and if Bigger or society were the ones at fault for her death. This debate is important because it touches on the subject of segregation and fear upon another minority race but also on the ongoing story of Native Son. My group was against society and we believed that Bigger was truly the one at fault because of these points. Bigger Thomas knew the consequences of being in a white girl’s room but still continued to carry Mary to her room which eventually led to her death. When Mrs.Dalton had came into the room Bigger had the power to choose his actions but he thought it was necessary to smother Mary to death. Her death was not due to society or how grew up thinking; it was his choice to kill her in the end with his own hands. He took pleasure in the excitement; not the other way around.

  In Native Son, Wright employs Naturalistic ideology and imagery, creating the character of Bigger Thomas, who seems to be composed of a mass of disruptive emotions rather than a rational mind joined by a soul. This concept introduces the possibility that racism is not the only message of the novel, that perhaps every person would feel as isolated and alone as Bigger does were he trapped in such a vicious cycle of violence and oppression. Bigger strives to find a place for himself, but the blindness he encounters in those around him and the bleak harshness of the Naturalistic society that Wright presents the reader with close him out as effectively as if they had shut a door in his

When analyzing Bigger Thomas, Richard Wright’s protagonist in the novel Native Son, one must take into consideration the development of his characterization. Being a poor twenty-year-old Black man in the south side of Chicago living with his family in a cramped one- bedroom apartment in the 1930’s, the odds of him prospering in life were not in his favor. Filled with oppression, violence, and tragedy, Bigger Thomas’ life was doomed from the moment he was born. Through the novel, Bigger divulges his own dreams to provide for his family and to be anything but a “nobody.” Although Bigger struggled to fight through obstacles to pursue his dreams for the future, his chase for a better life came to an abrupt

Oppression and Racism what are they? The dictionary defines oppression as “A prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority”, and Racism as “A belief that a particular race or group of people is superior or inferior to another”. Both of these exist in many societies and take on many forms and have no respect of your gender, your race or your financial status. In the early 1900’s in many parts of the United States these forces affected the decisions of many and controlled many of the actions of the people in that era. These people were ignorant to the fact that all men were equal in the eyes of God. Richard Wright in his novel, “Native Son” introduces Bigger Thomas and details his life as a black man living in what he calls