Native Son the Fact That

Native Son The fact that Richard Wright's novel was - and is still - offensive to some readers because of the baseness, the raw hurtful human emotions (including racism) and uncomfortable situations, does not take away from the power of the narrative. The fact that it is disagreeable to some doesn't make it less a true reflection of the time frame it was set in, although in reading it some of the action seems an exaggeration of life.

This story is highly relevant and worth studying as a great work of American literature because, painful though it may be for readers in the 21st Century, with killings and darkness presented frequently, the cultural reality (black vs. white; poor vs. powerful) that it reflects through the characters and the plot is part of American history; and moreover, the brilliantly crafted descriptions of how people behaved in the 1940s in terms of race and social class are indeed haunting.

The protagonist and most-discussed character in Native Son is of course Bigger Thomas. Readers know more about Bigger than about any other character, and yet Bigger has a hard time expressing his emotional experience fully and comprehensively. Much of the narrative and dialogue in the book centers around Bigger's struggle to articulate his inner feelings, and his attempts to come to terms with what he has done and what will happen to him.

On page 225 the narrator explains: "There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had.. And never in all his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together, never had he felt a sense of wholeness." He had trouble answering the simplest of questions sometimes. And his answers seemed at best ambiguous and at worst as though he didn't know what was being asked of him.

For example, when Max - who appears in the last third of the novel as a kind of helpful interpreter / legal representative or go-between that the reader knew nothing about earlier in the book - asks Bigger (357), "Do you love your people?" Bigger replies, "I don't know, Mr. Max. We all black and the white folks treat us the same." That's not an answer at all.

Then Max follows up with another question, "Bigger, are there many Negro boys like you?" And Bigger's response this time is a little closer to an answer, indeed it allows the author Wright to make a statement about life for a black male in the Jim Crow era. "I reckon so," he says.

"All of 'em I know ain't got nothing and ain't going nowhere." Max asks Bigger, "did you think you'd ever come to this?" And Bigger responds that "facing that death chair...seems like something like this just had to be" (358). Here we learn more about Bigger's inner-most thoughts and fears only because the character Max has opened up the door for Bigger, and for readers to get a glimpse deep inside the condemned man who admitted killing a white woman and thought about killing many people.

Indeed, on page 40 he imagines killing Gus; he fantasizes killing others, including Mr. Dalton (50); Peggy (111); Britten (153); Jan and Mary (70); some of the men who are looking for him (242-43, 250); and everyone at the inquest (307). Readers cringe when Bigger goes into his fantasies about killing all the people that are in his way and that disturb him, and yet the narrator allows readers to get a glimpse of a softer more human side of Bigger on page 275, as he sits in his cell.

"Hate and shame boiled in him against the people behind his back; he tried to think of words that would defy him...And at the same time he wanted those words to stop the tears of his mother and sister, to quiet and sooth the anger of his brother..." With all that has happened and with his being incarcerated with little hope of surviving, he is able to think about the pain he has caused his mother and sister and brother, and this gives Bigger some depth in the mind of the reader.

The character Buckley, acting as state's attorney (prosecutor) in the courtroom, helps convey an impression for the reader of what life was like for an accused black man in the 1940s. Of course the evidence seems overwhelming against Bigger; and the lurid idea of a black man burning one woman, severing the head of another white woman is perfect fodder for the state's attorney to play off of. If ever the evidence is stacked against a man, this is it.

On page 370 Buckley repeats the grim crimes to the audience; "A gasp of astonishment came from the court room and Bigger saw faces turning and looking in his direction." And the reader feels he knows Buckley the man outside the court of law through Buckley's employing his best rhetorical tools. "Never in my long career as an officer of the people have I...felt more unalterably certain my duty," he stated, raising the issue above the murder charges and into the realm of justice.

This case is "solid as this brick, the brick that battered a poor girl's brains out," and adds that he enjoys having "the masses of the citizens who elected him...standing literally at his back, waiting for him to enforce the law..." Buckley deliberately stirred things further by raising the window so the mob outside could have its say. "Kill 'im now!" "Lynch 'im!" The crowd called out.