Analysis of Native Son by Richard Wright - Research Paper Example

Wright, Bigger and the Black Experience A novel, as with other forms of fictional narratives, reflect much of its identity because what isbeing transmitted and expressed through writing are drawn from his or her complex experiences as an individual. A piece of written work could yield invaluable insights as to the author’s life, his world outlook as well as the variables that have influenced his perspectives, attitudes, character and writing. It is in this context that this paper explored the novel, “Native Son”. Specifically, this paper will examine the novel in order to shed light on the experiences that have shaped the person that was Richard Wright. The Native Son Widely acclaimed as the finest novel ever written by a Negro, Native Son was a crime narrative that told of two murders, several violent conflicts, a trial as well as a “rape” that was not actually one. Essentially, the novel was about a Negro – Bigger Thomas - who was despised and hunted by the society. The plot followed him killing a white woman, then his girlfriend lest he implicate him, his capture, the ensuing trial, then, his surprising confession. All in all, the story was about an individual who came to hate others and was made to make up for his insecurity by resorting to violence and other aggressive acts against the community he belonged to. The overall narration was outstanding, underscoring Wright’s competence in handling a highly complicated mystery. There were the crisp and rhythmic dialogues, and the highly effective descriptive work achieved in depicting the characters, prejudice, landscapes and the contemporary system. This dimension to the novel highlights Wright’s familiarity with Bigger’s experiences not just as a Black man himself, but a Negro who has experienced and saw in other blacks the worst plight ever experienced by his race during his time. The Perspectives of an Immigrant In Native Son, Wright used much of his experiences as a migrant to build his characters and paint the ghetto. Indeed, from 1927 to 1937 Wright lived in Chicago and shared a cramped and dirty shack with his family, which included his mother, a brother and an aunt. According to Baker (1990), during his first fifteen years, Wright was nurtured on the values, modes of adaptation, patterns of social and religious organization, bitterness, aspirations, and violence of the Southern black American folk, as he moved from Natchez to Memphis, from Memphis to Jackson, from Jackson to Elaine, Arkansas, and from Elaine back to Jackson. (123) He would later be acquainted with the black’s plight when as an adult he became an insurance agent, mingling with the poor living in similar degenerate communities. We saw Wright’s experiences reflected in the chapter of the novel, “How Bigger was Born”. The story told us that Bigger was, first, a migrant to the outside world of the rich slumlord who employed him as a chauffeur and, second, as a hunted man across the cold and poor Chicago landscape. Wright in Bigger It was easy for Wright to write about Bigger, a man who belonged in the poorest class, with no claim to some sophisticated education, to anything more than barely reading the alphabet, or to ideals. Wright was able to successfully depict him as occasionally cunning, though lacking in subtlety in his intelligence and emotions. In short, he was unapologetically representative of the ghetto’s ruffians. The novel immediately tells us about him from the very first pages of the book as no different from a rat that terrorizes the family. We can see the intimacy between Wright and the story he was telling through the details he was able to conjure, taking the reader with him, as if they are there witnessing the actual sequence of events. A case in point is the following passage: He walked to Dalton’s through the snow. His ring hand was in his coat pocket, his fingers about the kidnap note. When he reached the driveway, he looked about the street carefully… He walked up the steps and stood in front of the door. He waited a moment to see what would happen. So deeply conscious was he of violating dangerous taboo, that he felt the very air or sky would suddenly speak. (173) Another important experience that helped Wright wrote about Bigger was a job he once had in Chicago’s South Side Boys’ Club, a club funded to help ghettoized black youths. Here, Wright was employed as a recreation counselor, and organized activities, such as sports, that would keep black youths from the street, not primarily out of some altruistic intent, but, in Wright’s mind, as a way to keep these youths from stealing or harming valuable white property. (Bucci 67) With Bigger, he underscored that such attitude was obscene and often drive Blacks to hate and ridicule the system, as if ghetto existence could be improved by ping pong, marbles or checkers. Conclusion With Native Son and Bigger Thomas, Wright did something that no other writer in black literature have undertaken previously: he created a genuine type of African American, a character with no hope and aspirations, made savage by the ghetto life, eventually emerging as one that harbors hate for a world that he did not perfectly understand. In Bigger, Wright did not conceive a saintly hero, a martyr or some ideal black protagonist favored by other writers. It turned out that his experiences allowed him to realistically create people, scenes and situations that truly reflect the case of Black Americans. There was the danger and actions that came with Bigger, which were difficult to comprehend, at least for the mainstream, white-dominated society. From its perspective, Bigger’s actions were shocking because, after all, he received a lot of goodwill from white patrons, from the community itself. For Wright, however, this was not the case. A portion of the black population rebelling, just like what Bigger did, was but a logical and a natural consequence of the black’s “American reconstruction” experience. Wright led us back to his experiences – through Bigger and his community – that showed how Negroes were deprived with so much – land, the right to vote, the right to use public spaces, the right to live peacefully with equal rights and opportunities as any white men and women. The novel was Wright’s critique on racial discrimination. The only difference was that he was unapologetic of using Bigger and the things he did to highlight the injustice made on him. Works Cited Baker, Houston. Long black song: essays in Black American literature and culture. University of Virginia Press, 1990. Bucci, Richard. Richard Wrights Native Son. New Jersey: Research and Education Association, 1996. Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Doubleday, 1940. Read More