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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...
In fact, he seems resolved to accepting the social stratification that has haunted him throughout his entire life. It is Jan and Max who turn Bigger's crimes into proofs of America's ills. Jan and Max essentially want to show the world the "bigger picture" regarding racism and social injustice. Bigger becomes the poster boy for the promotion of communist ideals, even if those ideals fail to succeed in the end.
Ultimately, Marxism fails to make a difference. Bigger is still condemned to death and no one truly learns anything from Bigger's unfortunate life circumstances. However, Native Son remains a powerful example of how race and class are intertwined in American society, and how many of the problems faced by Americans may be related to class conflicts.
Works Cited
Wright, Richard. Native Son. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1940.
Works Cited
Wright, Richard. Native Son. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1940.
"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
(It will be recalled that Wright's then unpublished Lawd Today served as a working model for The Outsider.) Cross, in his daily dealings with the three women and his fellow postal workers feel something akin to nausea. His social and legal obligations have enslaved him. He has inherited from his mother a sense of guilt and foreboding regarding his relationship to women and his general awareness of amoral physical
(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
Man Who Was Almost a Man" by Richard Wright. The book takes a look at the foolishness of a young boy who in his desire for a gun discovers that respect is not gained through materialistic things but through moral ethics. The Man Who Was Almost A Man" Richard Nathan Wright was born to Nathan Wright and Ella Wilson on September 4, 1908 in Roxie, Mississippi. His father was an illiterate
Native Son Shards of a Man Bigger Thomas was born from the recesses of the experience of Richard Wright, all throughout the varying stages of his life. The author encountered a number of individuals, beginning with his childhood in Mississippi, who were decidedly countercultural as well as antisocial, who thought only to do whatsoever they pleased, and who were fated to live with the consequences, whatsoever those may be. Oftentimes, these
The author does not include figurative language in this passage; instead, he uses descriptive language to get his point across. The language of this passage is lyrical and yet frightening at the same time. Wright uses this language to paint mental pictures of the Communists, but he also lays the groundwork for the two Communists that appear in the story, Max and Jan. Bigger does not understand Communism, but as