Richard Wright’s Native Son

by Chris Mack

September 8, 2018

In 1940 a shocking novel, unlike anything that came before, exploded into best seller status in America, making its author Richard Wright both famous and rich. Native Son, Wright’s first published novel, was the first Book of the Month Club offering by an African American author and sold a quarter of a million copies in the first three weeks. By the next year it was a Broadway play directed by Orson Wells. Wright became the de facto literary spokesman for black America. Despite its themes of sex and violence, it is still taught in schools today and appears on almost everyone’s list of 100 best books of the 20th century.

Native Son is an enduring work of fiction for two main reasons. First is its raw depiction of racial injustice in America in the 1930s, and in particular the impact of segregation on the lives of inner-city blacks. But more important are the effects of this mass injustice on the psychology the book’s protagonist, Bigger Thomas. Bigger is the product of systemic oppression, a young man who is shown the American Dream but never allowed to attain it. Through Bigger we see the corrosive effects of oppression on a man’s very core, as oppression leads first to impotence, then to isolation, and finally to alienation from community, and ultimately from humanity. Bigger Thomas is an American native son, a true product of his environment, and that is the main point that Richard Wright wants us to get.

Bigger is raised and bathed in fear, held down by white power with almost no chance of changing his circumstance through his own efforts. This leads to his feelings of impotence and his embrace of action, any action regardless of consequence, as a remedy for his helplessness. Like all humans, Bigger desires above all else a connection to others. But his feelings of powerlessness over his own fate keep him isolated, which eventually leads to his alienation not just from the white world he cannot join, but from the black world he will not passively accept. Without a community to connect with, Bigger falls back time and time again to the only thing left to him, his innate sense of self-preservation. Without a sense of belonging he is unmoored from his obligations to others.

Bigger is that rare lead character in literature that is not meant to garner our sympathy, although sometimes he does. Anger and fear produce a toxic mix within him, and the result is not pretty. He is guilty of a grisly murder, though ironically not the one his convicted of. Bigger is not a good man. But that is the point. He is an inevitable product of the system he was trapped within. Certainly any one individual could have chosen a different path under the same circumstances, but that some choose the path of Bigger should surprise no one. James Baldwin wrote that every black man has a “private Bigger Thomas living in his skull.” It was Richard Wright’s genius to bring that inner Bigger Thomas out into our collective consciousness.

As a work of literature, Native Son certainly has its flaws. Wright put the importance of his message above the importance of his art. Usually this leads to literary mediocrity (think Ayn Rand), but Wright pulls it off admirably for two reasons. First, he is a good writer. Sure, there is some repetitiveness in his prose. The final speech by Bigger's lawyer Boris Max seems a blatant vehicle for the expression of Wright’s views. And many of the white characters are thin stereotypes. But in all, Wright gives us a story we can believe because the character of Bigger Thomas, and thus the story, seems true. Second, message over art works well in this case because of the enduring importance of the message. Lynchings are rare today, but they still occur. Racism is less overt and less ugly, but it is still prevalent. Black lives matter more today than in 1940, but not as much as they should. We need to see how bad things were in 1940 to understand why they are not good enough today.

Bigger Thomas was a product of his fear. Richard Wright deserves our admiration for giving us a depiction of Bigger Thomas that is fearless.


Chris Mack is a writer in Austin, Texas.

Copyright 2018, Chris Mack.

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