Books : Native Son

Rating: - Fear - Flight - Fate
This a great American novel about the greatest of American problems: race. Wright's series of three one-word titles for the sections of his book ("Fear" - "Flight" - "Fate") captures the issue in all of its raw horror.

The best part is "Fear", which opens the novel. Wright is brilliant in describing the grim conditions of Bigger Thomas' condition, his constant fear and anxiety, and his violent response to that condition. The only work that I can think of that better portrays this condition is Wright's own autobiographical "Black Boy", which describes the way in which fear is institutionalized in the Jim Crow South to control the population.

The book was and is controversial for choosing a murderer to portray the condition of Black America in 1940 and for showing how that murder and subsequent attempt at extortion were in a perverse way the first free and self-affirming acts of Bigger's life. I don't believe, however, that Wright is glorifying violence or confirming racial stereotypes about the "animals" who inhabit the "ghetto."

First, there is some ambiguity to the criminal act that is reminiscent of the crimes portrayed in the novels of Dreiser, whom Wright admired. But as was the case with the crimes depicted by another writer admired by Wright -- Dostoyevsky -- the author clearly disapproves of the act, and it requires condemnation and punishment. One can empathize with the odd circumstances that lead to Bigger's crime and can see it as more of a product of fear than anything else -- perhaps he even should have been convicted of reckless homicide or manslaughter. That one can understand the crime in the sense of recognizing the humanity of the criminal does not remove the criminality of the act or the need for condemnation. Indeed this makes the novel more interesting and compelling.

Second, the point of making Bigger a hero and having the reader identify with him is not to glorify violence or to demean Blacks. The point is to emphasize the need to recognize collective guilt. Bigger is the "Native Son." He's a product of America, and we are all responsible for making him and for doing something about the underlying problem. We identify with Bigger because we all made him.

When I first read the book, I liked the lengthy closing argument of Bigger's Marxist criminal defense lawyer, wherein Wright addresses the larger social forces that determine Bigger's fate and that mitigate his guilt. It's good old-fashioned critical Marxism, and Wright was a "card-carrying" Communist at the time he wrote the book. On re-reading, I find the speech far too long and abstract.

Another insight into the book on a second reading is Wright's humor. This is an oddly funny book. Wright has some fun lampooning the anti-semitism and racism of the whites in the book, and it is at times damned funny. Even Bigger at times can smile ironically to himself at some dumb move or twist of fate he experiences.

Mr. James is a great reader of the audio version of the book. His inflections for the white and black characters are just terrific. He has a wonderful voice and is one of the best readers I've experienced.

One of the top ten American novels of the 20th Century -- I highly recommend it.

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Rating: - Invisible Shadows
Native Son / 0-06-080977-9

This book should be read alongside Ellison's superb Invisible Man. Native Son employs much the same idea - namely, that it is difficult to NOT become what others want to force you to become.

Bigger, the focus of this novel, is a good man. He's not the best, or the smartest, or the oldest, or the wisest, but he has a good heart. He wants to become a better person - he wants to BE 'bigger' in a real sense of personal growth. Not that he would think of it in these terms - Bigger is a simple man at heart.

When Bigger finds himself innocently trapped in a compromising position - a position that will be misunderstood, a position that will cause him to bear the worst of false accusations, a position that could cost his freedom and even his life - he tries his best to cover up the situation as best he possibly can. But he cannot protect himself from the stereotypes and prejudices that plague him and, in the end, he becomes the very monster that everyone around him insisted on seeing in him. He is plagued by guilt, both for what he has done and for the damage he has done to others who look like him. And yet, he cannot truly be blamed for this, because it is clear that those who hated him made sure, through systematic disenfranchisement, that he would fail eventually.

Whereas Ellison's invisible man was able to disappear completely, Wright's Bigger was not so lucky, yet both are equal victims.

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Rating: - Terrific
Richard Wright's 1940 novel, Native Son, violates two of the basic tenets of modern MFA dogma. The first is that it starts off very slowly, then builds up a powerful narrative steam (although not of the simplistic plot-driven variety), and the second is that it is a tale that overwhelmingly `tells' what is happening, rather than `showing', which violates all the simplistic MFA workshop prohibitions against same. Yet, it is a great novel- despite some flaws in length and occasional descriptive lapses into banality, because, by its end, and the courtroom speeches for and against the protagonist- a killer and rapist named Bigger Thomas, your average reader is wholly involved in the vortical scenario. And this scenario wholly undercuts the thesis that this book is about life as a black man. Instead, it is about life in America in the late 1930s, during the wane of the Great Depression, and just before the start of World War Two. In a sense, this book is an black urban counterpart to John Steinbeck's rural white The Grapes Of Wrath, even if it's a tad lesser of a work, much as Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter covers similar psychological ground as Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, even though the former's protagonist is a Southern adult white male, and the latter's an adolescent New York female. When first released (in expurgated form; the unexpurgated version did not see daylight for over fifty years), it was a bestseller, with over 300,000 hard copies sold, and Wright immediately became a black icon and spokesman, but neither stage nor film versions of the tale have ever had the impact that the book did. A 1951 film version, made in Argentina, and starring a fortysomething non-actor Wright as Bigger, was ridiculed critically across the globe.

The novel, written in the third person omniscient- thus almost all `telling,' is divided into three long chapters, or `Books,' as in the older literary sense....All of these points, and more- too lengthy to detail in a mere review, prove that the book is far beyond its most strident and ignorant critics' claims, and is still as relevant (sadly) today, as ever; in the delusions that the poor are fed- be it of race, then, or war, today. It is no coincidence that, upon the eve of World War Two, Bigger dreams of a career in the military, as a flyboy, even as his race denied that possibility. It is also relevant in the ways that society delimits many of its citizens via poverty, in the way crimes are seized upon by politicians, the media, and authority figures to boost their careers, or even in how little everyday people, no matter their sex nor color, truly understand themselves. In the end, the biggest thing that Bigger Thomas admits is his fear of the act of cogitation, for with that comes realization, in every sense of the word, including of the self. And that is likely the reason so many readers misunderstand it- for how many can grasp what they lack? It is also why so many critics likely misinterpret such a challenging and great work as Native Son.

Think. Read. Then think again. Then repeat.

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Rating: - A Predestined Path of Life
Author, Richard Wright, weaves a fictional tale of Bigger Thomas, a 20 yr. black male living, striving in the Black Belt of Chicago. The story takes place sometime ago when the world seemed to be a lot different, but make no mistake about it, most of us know that Bigger Thomas still exists today. Early in the first chapter, Fear, Wright describes Bigger as:

"...a strange plant blooming in the day and wilting at night; but the sun that made it bloom and the cold darkness that made it wilt were never seen. It was his own sun and darkness, a private and personal sun and darkness. He was bitterly proud of his swiftly changing moods and boasted when he had to suffer the results of them. It was the way he was, he would say; he could not help it, he would say.... And it was his sullen stare and the violent action that followed that made Gus and Jack and G.H. hate and fear him as much as he hated and feared himself."

The more one becomes familiar with Bigger, the more one realizes that a tragedy will befall Bigger; a tragedy that is a result of his own doing. Bigger's instincts, honed by the pressures of being black and poor, will lead him down a path of ill-fated acts. The reader shadows his every move in the second chapter, Flight, and watches his destiny come to fruition in Fate, the final chapter.

If you want to experience oppression, race relations, poverty through the plight of a young black male in the early 20th Century, then this is one of the books to read.

As a final note, I couldn't help but notice the Du Boisian references, where on occasion, Bigger is portrayed as being "...behind a veil" or "...behind a curtain".

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Rating: - Wright is right
Richard Wright's America is still here. July, 2008- events of today could be taken from this novel or his short stories.