Gourt Home::Gourt :: Native Son
Native Son (1940) is a novel by African-American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year old Bigger Thomas, an African-American of the poorest class, struggling to live in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s. His life is doomed from the outset: after Bigger accidentally kills a white woman, he runs from the police, kills his girlfriend and is then caught and tried. "I didn't want to kill", Bigger shouted. "But what I killed for, I am! It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill."
Written mostly in the third person, Wright gets inside the head of "brute Negro" Bigger, revealing his feelings, thoughts and point of view as he commits crimes, is confronted with racism, violence and debasement—the name "Bigger" both is a play of the word "Nigger", and a nod to the bigger social forces behind his actions. While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright is sympathetic to the systemic inevitability behind them. The story is a powerful statement about the inevitable fate of African-Americans as a result of racial inequality and social injustice. As Bigger's lawyer points out, there is no escape from this destiny for his client or any other black American, since they are the necessary product of the society that raised them. "No American Negro exists," Wright once wrote "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull."
Wright's protest novel was an immediate best-seller, selling 250,000 hardcover copies in its initial run. It was one of the earliest successful attempts to explain the racial divide in America in terms of the social conditions imposed on African-Americans by the dominant white society. It also made Wright the wealthiest black writer of his time and established him as a spokesperson for African-American issues, and a "father of Black American literature".
Native Son led James Baldwin to write his essay Notes of a Native Son (1955), although Baldwin came to see the work as flawed.
In 1993 the novel was for the first time published in its entirety, together with an introduction, a chronology and notes by Arnold Rampersad, a well-regarded scholar of African-American literary works. This imprint also contains Richard Wright's 1940 essay How 'Bigger' Was Born.
It was adapted for the stage by Wright and Paul Green, with some conflict between the authors affecting the project. The initial production, directed by Orson Welles and with Canada Lee as Bigger opened at the St. James Theatre on March 24, 1941.
Native Son has been filmed twice; once in 1951 and again in 1986. Neither version is considered to have been an artistic success, despite Wright's involvement in the earlier version. The first version was made in Argentina; the novel's relatively sympathetic portrayal of the communist characters would have made an American production impossible at the time. Wright played the title character despite being twice the age of Bigger Thomas. The film was not well received, with Wright's performance being a particular target of critics.
In the book The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket, it is mentioned that Wright asks an unfathomable question in the novel, which asks "Who knows when some slight shock disturbing the delicate balance between social order and thirsty aspiration, shall send the skyscrapers in our cities toppling?"
See also
References
- Native Son, ISBN 0060809779
- Native Son, ISBN 0060812494
External links
1940 novels | Modern Library 100 best novels | Time Magazine 100 best novels | African American novels
"Native Son"