Native son: themes and analysis

Native Son -- Marxism and Existentialism in Dialectic in African-American Literature

Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas is a Black man who commits a violent act, not of his own volition, but because of the prejudicial constructs of the White society Bigger is located in, as a Black man. At the beginning of the text of Native Son, set in 1930's Chicago Bigger is a driver for a wealthy family with a liberal minded daughter named Mary. Bigger feels alienated from larger American society, however, because he lives in a world with no apparent avenues for Black advancement, a society that sees Blacks as only criminals or servants. At one point, speaking with his fellow African-Americans, he muses that no matter what happens, even if men land on the moon, they will not send Black men to do such fantastical things.

Soon afterwards in the novel, when Bigger is escorting the drunken Mary back to her room after a night he has spent in Harlem, at her behest, driving her boyfriend and herself around the town to various exotic jazz and juke joints, he panics. When he fears he is about to be discovered with the prone body girl, Bigger accidentally strangles her to stifle her cries, mostly out of fear of being discovered and labeled a Black rapist of a White woman. Instead, this innocent man becomes the being White society has long feared, ironically because of his own fears of incarceration as a rapist. Bigger hides his crime, but is soon found out by the institutions of White justice and is summarily executed. "Bigger's crimes" thus are shown "to be the result of a fear" that is "itself the product of his acting out others' definitions of himself and the world." (Descorte, 1998, p.8)

In essence, Wright suggests that in the persona of Bigger, White society creates its own 'monster' -- that of the Black man in search of White women, by forcing Bigger to live in constant fear and suspicion of being desirous of White women. Yet, society offers few avenues of employment for Black men, other than employment as servants in White homes. Later, the lawyer's defense of Bigger Thomas in Native Son suggests not only was Bigger not at fault, but the crime was virtually inevitable, given the nature of the societal pressures Bigger was forced to live by, essentially making his defense case on the grounds of criminal causation -- society, not the man caused the enactment of the crime. This class-based defense of Bigger's case, although it does not win Bigger freedom, was one that Wright himself found persuasive at the time, on a personal level.

However, later Wright was to break with the American Communist party, a break that perhaps can be seen in the machinations of the defense attorney himself, as the man's language in the courtroom and rhetorical strategies prove ineffectual in saving Bigger. But before his break occurred in 1944, as voiced in a public essay, in the 1930s Wright's project in Native Son was evidently to try to commit his highly personal art to political engagement, willingly blurring the line between "art" & "propaganda." (Railton, 2005) the needs of Black men like Thomas in the political here and now were thus explicitly contrasted between the spiritual and ineffectual comfort given by the priest before Bigger was about to die. The type of comfort given by Bigger's Marxist, radical defense attorney it might be argued, at least attempts to set his client free, unlike the priest who merely comforts him and prepares Bigger for death.

Thus, Wright's novel defines the Communist Party more positively against the ideology of Christianity as a faith. The Reverend Hammond gives Bigger a cross and tells him that the meaning of his life is to be found in the Biblical story of humanity's Fall and Jesus' Atonement. The priest makes no mention of the suffering of Bigger before Bigger Thomas even knew the woman he is alleged to have murdered, or of the fall of White men from grace, in their prejudiced attitudes. This, Wright implies, is a crucial failing of Christianity, as environed in America of his day. (Wright, 1940, p. 333)

In contrast, when the communist Jan forgives Bigger, the attorney stresses that although Bigger may have killed and engaged in a violent act, this does not mean that Bigger's assumption of some responsibility in acting in fear and anger means that Bigger loses his right to live in the world that has caused him so much pain. (Wright, 1940, p. 334) Rather than Christian suffering and forbearance of societal ills, Marxism provides a clear contrast in its attempted explanation of suffering in the world as an economic as well as a racially-based class conflict. The chauffer and servant was placed near wealth, luxury, and a society that deemed him barbaric, and both White and Black, wealthy and poor representatives of this unequal class and racial division were harmed as a result

When Wright later renounced communism, he did so because he confessed that his infatuation with the ideology was more personal than economic. "It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great power of trade unionism, nor the excitement of underground politics that claimed me; my attention was caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered but kindred peoples into a whole...In my concrete relations with others I had encountered nothing to encourage me to believe in my feelings. It had been by denying what I saw with my eyes, disputing what I felt with my body, that I had managed to keep my identity intact. But it seemed to me that here at last in the realm of revolutionary expression was where Negro experience could find a home, a functioning value and role." (Wright, 1970, pp.62-64)

Wright's identification with communism was less that of a worker who was oppressed by a societal ideology, but a man who felt estranged from his own identity as an American and a human being -- thus Wright's Marxism, it might be said, was more existentialist in tone than it was socialist. Some critics have seen this effort as a failure upon the part of Wright, writing that "in some ways the novel refuses to let go of its commitment to Bigger's I am," as socialism calls its political adherents to do so. "Is Wright's commitment finally to Marxist idea of collective identity (we) or the existentialist belief in private experience (I)?...[So] what about the novel we've read? Does it resolve the various contradictions, between Max's (white) voice and Bigger's (black) experience? Between importance of the individual only as social symbol & the value and meaning of individual "I am"? Between Max's faith that only social change can make life meaningful and Bigger's private quest for "freedom," control, life itself?" (Railton, 2005)