Richard Wright's Native Son Written

Richard Wright's Native Son Written when he was a member of the Communist Party, Richard Wright's Native Son contains Marxist elements throughout the novel. Wright was also influenced by naturalist writing techniques and by existential philosophy, but more of the novel's characters and plot elements are influenced by Marxism than by naturalism or by existentialism. For example, while Native Son is largely about racism in America, Wright phrases his ideas on racism also as a matter of class conflict.

For example, blacks are viewed as second-class citizens because they are poor. Early in the novel, Bigger concludes that "rich white people liked Negroes better than they did poor whites," (37). Race is often depicted as a matter of class in Native Son, even more than as a matter of skin color. The presence of communist characters like Mary, Jan and Boris contribute to the novel being a Marxist one.

The novel's protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is not himself a Marxist, but his life becomes inevitably shaped by class struggle, which is the essence of Marxism. Richard Wright's Native Son is an American Marxist novel because its characters and plot elements are shaped by class struggle. Bigger fears whites as a generalized force of oppression; they are not only the dominant group because of their skin color but because they control the means of production. Marxism is concerned mainly with the control of the means of production.

In Native Son, the rich people are in control, and the rich people also happen to be white. Therefore, race is secondary to class. For example, Mr. Dalton controls Bigger's entire building. Even though he pretends to be a great supporter of the African-American community as through his donating money to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Dalton remains a capitalist. Even his own daughter Mary criticizes him for being a capitalist (p. 59). Mr. Dalton is also portrayed as patronizing, both in a positive and negative sense.

Literally, he is a financial patron to blacks, but he also patronizes, or looks down on, them as social inferiors. Wright therefore suggests that race and social class are intimately related. In Part One of the novel, Bigger expresses his primitive understanding of class struggle when he states, "Sure, it was all a game and white people knew how to play it," (37). People with economic and political power are the main obstacles to racial equality; characters like Buckley also show how class conflict is even more important than race.

Native Son is also a Marxist novel because Bigger demonstrates that class conflict is a deep problem in society. Poverty makes Bigger feel anxious, afraid, mistrustful, and powerless. The only reason why he accepts the chauffeur job is because he is poor. Bigger's unfortunate string of murders occurred as a result of Bigger's sense of powerlessness. The only characters who speak to Bigger as if he were an equal happen to all be communists: Mary, Jan, and Boris Max.

Bigger is shocked to find white people speaking to him as a human being: "She responded to him as if he were human, as if he lived in the same world as he," (p. 74). The communists' motivation for treating Bigger kindly is their notion of social equality, which was in turn rooted in Marxism. Bigger himself.