Book #13: Atonement

Book #13: Atonement by Ian McEwan

February 28, 2013


Until I got to the "twist" at the end of the book, I felt kind of annoyed, even pissed off, throughout most of it. The plot centers around a day of events at a country home in England, which lead to 13-year-old Briony Tallis, an aspiring writer and quite a naive young girl, accusing Robbie Turner, the son of a family servant and her father's beneficiary, of raping her cousin Lola. The rest of the story centers around the consequences of that day for three of the characters: Robbie and Briony themselves, and Cecilia, Briony much-older sister and Robbie's lover (at least, their relationship had only just started when everything went down). Now, I wasn't so much upset at Briony for what she did; after all, she was a pretty sheltered kid, she didn't understand the things that had happened, and, as she recalls five years after the event, she had not acted out of malice. Indeed, she felt that she'd been doing the right thing. What made me mad was the way that Cecilia and Robbie were so unwilling to forgive Briony. See, I felt that their coldness toward her was undeserved. Even after she goes to them and begs them to allow her to make things right, they still view her in contempt. Poor Briony; though McEwan's descriptions of her at the beginning of the book are not entirely flattering (she was very set in her ways, and had to have everything just so, neat and tidy, and any little disturbance in her world sent her into a turmoil), I felt sympathetic toward her.

I'll explain the twist at the end after a more thorough description of the book. The structure of it is very interesting, and definitely worth noting. The beginning of the book (approximately the first half of it) all takes place over the course of that one summer day in 1935. Talk of war is brewing (of course, history tells us that World War II did not begin until 1939), but none of the characters have been directly affected by it yet. It will affect them all, in the end. But on this day, there is a lot of activity in the house. There are more people there than usual; in addition to young Briony and her constantly-ailing mother Emily (whom the children do not even address as "Mother" or "Mum," calling her by name, due to her lame mothering skills) and her constantly absent father (who, it is briefly noted, is having an affair in London, claiming that his work in the government keeps him), Briony's older sister Cecilia is home from college, recently graduated. Robbie has graduated as well. Their perspectives in this part of the story center around the growing sexual tension between them, which comes to a head that very day.

The Tallis home is also hosting the Quincey children, young ginger cousins. Lola, 15, is haughty and manipulative, though she is ultimately a victim in the strange situation. Her twin brothers, Pierrot and Jackson, are young and rambunctious, but they mean well. They are probably even more pitiable than Briony herself. They are torn up over the impending divorce of their selfish parents, their sister is mean to them, and they are far away from home. Being red-haired, British twins, I thought of the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter series. Besides them, the eldest Tallis child, Leon (the darling of the family) and his friend Paul Marshall, who at first seems to be just a drab guy who owns a company that makes disgusting candy bars, but who turns out to be kind of a shady guy.

With all these people around the place, and so much going on, nobody could possibly know the whole story. At times, the reader is given glimpses of Emily's perspective (as she lies in bed, fighting off an impeding, or perhaps imagined, migraine), and that of Lola or Betty the cook, but otherwise the story is mostly told through Briony, Cecilia, or Robbie...at least, that's what the reader is lead to believe. But with the two presiding adults in the house, Emily and Cecilia, distracted by their own troubles, it's no wonder that they had no idea what was going on with the kids. That the twins were distressed, or that Briony was upset about her little play, which she'd planned on her cousins performing in her brother's honor, in ruins...or that Lola was being attacked and raped by Paul Marshall. So really, if anything, I would blame Emily, and perhaps even Cecilia, for what happened (and of course, Marshall himself, as the rapist). But not Briony.

Cecilia and Robbie's affair was only beginning on that ill-fated day, when it was cut short by these events. You see, the sexual tension between them had been building for years. When they were both in school, they did not socialize with one another, supposedly on account of their shaky social standing. But that day, after their fight over the broken vase by the fountain (during which Cecilia stripped to her underwear and bra and went to fish out the broken piece...as Briony watched from an upstairs bedroom), and the very sexual letter that Robbie "accidently" sent to Cecilia (yeah, I would definitely call that one a Freudian slip) through Briony (who read the letter, and was shocked and confused by the use of the word "cunt"), the two of them came very close to consummating their relationship in the library. They were in the process of fucking against the shelves, or just starting, when Briony walked in on them.

Cecilia should have talked to her sister. Briony thought she'd walked in on Robbie attempting to rape her sister, after reading the note and dubbing him a "maniac." But Cecilia, embarrassed or annoyed at the interruption, would not talk about it. Again, in this case, I would lay some blame on Cecilia for not setting her sister straight, for not explaining that she and Robbie were really in love, or whatever. Anyway, she and Robbie would not get the chance to consummate their relationship officially for a few more years.

At dinner (where scratches are visible on both Marshall and Lola, hinting at an earlier attack), it is discovered that the troubled twins have run off, and all of the party (save Emily) take off to the dark grounds to find them. Briony, wishing to avoid Robbie in case he wants to take out his frustration on her, comes upon her cousin Lola being raped by a man whose face she does not clearly see. In her mind, it is logical to assume that it was Robbie, and Lola does not contradict her story. Robbie is arrested at dawn (after returning with the lost children), and he is only freed from prison when he agrees to go and fight with the war.

The story jumps ahead five years for the remainder. First, there is a relatively short section about some of Robbie's experiences in the war as he and two officers are crossing through France, headed for the coast as the British troops retreat. He reflects a bit on his bitterness toward Briony, and how he believed that she acted out of jealousy and anger...you see, she'd had a crush on him when she was young, perhaps 10 or 11, and he thought that this had prompted her to lie and get him arrested and charged for the crime of raping Lola. He and Cecilia, who has cut herself off from her family, are still together. She is a nurse in London, having realized that the "degree" issued to her as a literature major is worth absolutely nothing (especially due to the fact that she is a woman). He dreams of them being together again, and at the end of his section, he makes it safely to the coast. The ending drastically changed my perspective of this section, for sure.

Next, back in London, 18-year-old Briony has decided to skip college and become a nurse herself, following in her sister's footsteps, though they have not spoken since she sent Robbie to prison. She is still passionate about her writing, though a story that she'd written about the events of that fateful day in 1935 failed to get published. One day, after getting a day off from the hospital at which she's been working hard to care for the influx of injured soldiers, she journeys through the city, first to the private wedding of Lola and Marshall, then to her sister's apartment, where she confronts both Cecilia and Robbie for the first time in years, and promises to do what she can to "atone" for what she has done to them. She has carried her guilt for years, which is very sad to me. I don't feel that she deserved to beat herself up over it so much, nor did she deserve her sister or Robbie derision. When she parts from them, though, there is hope. They have given her instructions for how to help them, which she plans to enthusiastically carry out.

Then, the twist.

The entire story, up to the final 20 pages, was the final draft of that first failed story, written by Briony. Therefore, all other perspectives were merely imagined. She was able to recreate Robbie's experiences from correspondence with a prisoner and with an army officer, and through the letters written back and forth between Cecilia and Robbie themselves, housed in a war museum. Because Robbie and Cecilia did not survive the war. They both died in 1940; Robbie got some kind of infection or disease that soldiers in war are prone to, and Cecilia died when her hospital was bombed. Briony never did see them again after that day in 1935; her reunion with them was imagined. Lola and Marshall's wedding was not, and in those final 20 pages, told in the first person from 77-year-old Briony's perspective, she actually sees the aged couple one more time, noting that though Marshall looks withered, Lola is still vibrant as she approaches 80. Briony wishes for them both to die, so that she can publish her book with their real names in it. She needs to do it for her own atonement, though she acknowledges at the end that she may die before it is carried out.

So in the end, Briony really did not make amends for the "crime" she committed, unwittingly, as a child. It cannot be said how much of her sister and almost-brother-in-law's contempt of her was real or imagined. That kind of lessened the tension for me, thinking that some of that coldness must have come from Briony's own guilty imagination. In the end, though she really had not been able to "take back" her "crime," she seemed to be at peace with the new ending that she had created for the people that she cared about and had hurt. She felt that, as long as the manuscript of her story existed, they would live happily forever, in love. Though some might argue that she had never been able to properly atone for what she'd done, she seemed at peace with it in the end, as she also began to accept the fact that she mind was starting to go to dementia. But she created a world that fit with what she really wanted, through her stories, just as she'd always done. She created a world in which she'd been forgiven, which was good enough for her.

A group of nurses, circa WWII. Briony describes her experiences as a nurse in training. They are unsung heroes of the war, risking their own safety (and often their lives, as was the case with Cecilia) to work in what were essentially giant Nazi bomb targets.

The Weasley twins from the famous Harry Potter films. They sure were lovable characters; shame that one of them was (spoiler alert, in case you're years behind) killed in the last one.

Book #12: On the Road

Book #12: On the Road by Jack Kerouac

February 10, 2013


This particular book has been one that I've intended to read for a long time. It's such an integrated part of our culture that I've always been familiar with the basic premise, and I was fascinated by the idea of jumping in the car (or better, hitchhiking!) and seeing the country. On the Road is the fictionalized stories of Kerouac's travels around the continent, from about 1947 to 1950. The narrator of the story is Sal Paradise, who represents Kerouac himself. He is a young writer, and he is quite aimless. But the story isn't so much about him as about Dean Moriarty, a fictionalized version of Neal Cassady. Prior to reading this book, I had no idea who this person was, but I found the character of Dean so interesting that I looked up some information on him. More on that in a bit.

I will admit that I'm somewhat disappointed  not to know more about Sal. I mean, even if the author didn't want to lay out his life story in this book, he could have given more on the background of Sal, his character. When Sal isn't tramping around the country, he stays with his aunt in New York City. How did he end up with his aunt? This isn't really explained. We know that Sal's father is dead (perhaps his mother, too, but I don't remember this being mentioned as a certainty). As a writer, Sal isn't exactly rolling in wealth, but during the time of his nonconsecutive travels he does have some success with a published book. We also know that Sal spent some time in the Navy, and he gets some money from his GI bill. He's a student while in New York...don't know if he graduates or not, though. That's really about the extent that we have on Sal's background. Throughout the story, he is much more interested in sharing Dean's story, and it's certainly a fascinating one to tell.

Dean is insane. He constantly makes wild plans, and usually follows through on them. If he's not chattering away at a mile a minute, sharing his wisdom with listeners who can't understand his ramblings, he's silent and swaying and taking in life with a silly smile. But he's not happy. He's constantly running...not really away from something, but toward something, but he doesn't seem to be able to identify what IT is. He takes the metaphor of life as being a road quite seriously, and he is convinced that he will find something better than ever in the next physical destination. He's pretty young at the start of the book, very early 20's (compared to Sal's mid-to-late 20's), and by the end of the book he's on his third marriage, living with his second wife (from whom he is legally divorced) in San Francisco while his current wife is in New York. At one point, he laments the fact that he's such a shoddy father; he doesn't hold down a constant job, and he doesn't even stick around long enough to take care of his children or wives properly. But he's too busy trying to find IT, and at the end of the book, it is uncertain what IT is.

As much of a scoundrel as Dean is, I found him fascinating, so I read up on Neal Cassady (ie, I looked him up on good old Wikipedia). He was basically just the same as Dean is described in the book, a rambler who can easily make friends (but doesn't easily keep them, with his shiftless ways). He wasn't famous for anything except being himself, and he is considered to be an American legend. This book is not the only one that depicts Cassady; he's supposed to be the inspiration behind the main character in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (haven't read it...yet, but I do love the film, featuring Jack Nicholson in one of his greatest roles of all time); he's mentioned in Allen Ginsberg's famous poem "Howl" (who is depicted in On the Road as the equally fascinating Carlo Marx); and, he is featured in Hunter S. Thompson's nonfictional Hell's Angels. And that is not the extent of it! Also, Cassady spent time living with the Grateful Dead, and the band payed homage to him in the song The Other One (I am ashamed to admit that I am not familiar with this particular song; I grew up listening to a lot of it, since my old man is a neo-hippie Dead Head himself, and I grew to appreciate the music; I'm listening to an 18-minute live version of this as I write this, featuring an appropriately insane drum solo at the beginning). Cassady was not published himself during his lifetime, but his memoirs and letters were published posthumously.

But I believe that On the Road is an essential American novel not only because of its depiction of this legendary man, but also because of Kerouac's beautiful descriptions of the various American landscapes (and Mexico, too, near the end). Kerouac's writing style can be a little erratic at times, either because he's trying to capture the frantic, drug-induced lifestyle that Sal lived, or maybe because he was tripping balls when he wrote the book himself. Either way, he's descriptions of American cities and countryside are poetic. But it cannot be ignored that Sal, for all his bumming around, is spoiled. I was most annoyed at the section in the book where he takes up with a single mother, a Mexican woman living in squalor in California. Sal and this woman meet in LA, and she takes him to her hometown, a dusty little place where most of the people are farm workers living in tents. He romanticizes this lifestyle, even becoming a poorly paid cotton-picker himself, and for the short time he is there, he throws himself wholeheartedly into the role of family man. But when he grows tired of it, and when he gets his next check from his aunt, he takes off, back to his real life. Meanwhile, the woman he supposedly loved and her child are stuck in the same place. They will never have the opportunity to travel and see America the way that Sal has; they may not have much of a chance to go anywhere.

I was also very annoyed when Sal thought that he "wanted to be a Negro" (the book takes place in the '40s, when such a term was acceptable). He described the black people that he encounters as being carefree, joyful, and he longed to be like them. Clearly, he was either completely ignorant to the treatment of the entire race, or he was choosing to ignore it. Either way, this thought struck me as being a really stupid statement by a privileged white man. However, with the whole "beat" scene that he and his friends are into, the races are often mixed, and Sal would probably have only had the chance to mingle with black people in such a setting, where whiskey and wine are flowing and jazz horns are blowing.

As a matter of fact, this book is considered to be a very important one from the "beat generation," and Cassady and Kerouac and Ginsberg are considered to be icons of that generation. The famous hippies of a decade or two later clearly came from this; in the book, Dean is really into sitting around and having all-night conversations in an attempt to unravel the secrets of life (though Sal finds the conversations between Dean and Carlo to be rambling and aimless). These guys are not really into material possessions, carrying on the road with them just enough to get by (and sometimes not even that much). They smoke pot (they call it 'tea') and do other drugs. They appreciate nature, and other cultures and people (though Dean's blatant homophobia had me irked, especially when he seemed to "dig" everyone else so much), if only for the shallow differences that they view in them. Though Dean had a far from privileged childhood, he still seems like an ignorant white boy when traveling in Mexico, marveling at the novelty of the dark, quiet, calm people there and their poverty-stricken lives.

Anyway, for some reason, the beat generation today is not viewed in the same light as the hippie generation. People still love hippies, and honestly, if the characters in the book really are supposed to represent these important figures of the beat generation, I can see why. Sal and his friends are constantly seeking their "kicks"; when it comes down to it, they're just looking for fun and adventure. At least it seemed like the hippies stood for something, peace on earth and all that. Maybe it's because, during the hippie generation, there was a war on, while in this book Sal only makes a couple of mentions of World War II. Jazz isn't nearly as popular today as rock and roll (I myself prefer the latter, though I do like a dose of jazz every once in a while). The beat generation is all but completely dead; the hippies live and roll on.

Though I view the characters' ignorance and hedonism with disgust, I do envy their adventures. Just to walk out onto the highway, stick out your thumb, and go wherever destiny guides you...that's real freedom right there. That doesn't happen much anymore; hitchhiking is illegal in most places in America, and people are afraid to pick anyone up. I've had the fantasy of dropping everything, packing up a few clothes and my dog, and pulling a Chris McCandless (except without the starving-to-death-in-the-wilderness part, of course), but I'm too tied down with my responsibilities to my family and school and career, which are all very important to me. But then I think of the fate that Neal Cassady suffered, dying young (at age 41) in Mexico, never having really settled down, and probably never finding IT. He had freedom, but it came at a price, I think.

(To the right) The recently-famous homeless hitch-hiker Kai, who got a ride from a crazy guy who attacked some people. Kai, carrying a hatchet,  sprang into action and took the guy down. This is the face of the typical American hitchhiker today. I am certain that Dean would have "dug" him .

(To the left) Silhouette of a jazz band. Sal and his friends were crazy about jazz music (they called it "bop," and it took me longer than I'm proud of to figure out exactly what they were referring to). 

Book #11: Native Son

Book #11: Native Son by Richard Wright

February 1, 2013


The connections between this book and my last entry are coincidental. Native Son also takes place in Chicago, only a few decades later (at the start of World War II, but before the bombing of Pearl Harbor). This book also depicts the Communist (Socialist, Communist, I've always lumped those two together) Party in Chicago. Sinclair's optimistic predictions about the growth of the Party (through the eyes of Jurgis) have not been realized, though they do have some influence in city politics. Mostly, they are viewed negatively by the public, but there are still influential and educated people who are active within it. The book is a little bit about that, but mostly, it is about the violence, fear, and hatred that are the products of hundreds of years of oppression, separation, and misunderstanding. Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the novel, is certainly a product of his environment, as his lawyer attempts to argue in court.

I'll back up a bit. I've read some of Richard Wright's work before, and have found it to be poignant, so I was eager to read one of his best-known full-length works (besides Black Boy, his autobiography). One story that always stood out to me was "Big Boy Leaves Home" from the collection Uncle Tom's Children. In the story, a group of young black boys in a rural area are enjoying a day in the sun, when a white woman sees them swimming naked on her property. Jim Crow south had many rules (in fact, the first story in the same collection is titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow," recounting various points in the author's life when he has encountered hostile racism and the legal power that whites had been granted over him), and many of these were created around this fear that black men were these sexual deviants who wanted to rape white women (or, perhaps the white men felt inadequate around potential competition). Even though Big Boy and his friends are just kids in school, the woman freaks out and her husband (or father) comes running with his gun, shooting at the kids without asking questions. Two of the boys are shot dead, and Big Boy and Bobo try to defend their lives. Big Boy gets the gun and shoots the man, and he and Bobo run for their lives. Big Boy witnesses Bobo being lynched, but he successfully gets away and is shipped to Chicago with the help of a family friend. Yet even though Chicago is in the North, it is no haven against racism, as Native Son illustrates.

Bigger Thomas is a 20-year-old who lives in a room (basically a studio apartment, but think smaller) with his mother, and younger brother and sister. Bigger isn't a likable character throughout the course of the book. He is rude to his family; he contemplates a robbery with his friends (though ultimately "wimps out"); he carries a knife and gun and isn't afraid to pull them out at times. His friends describe him as having a hot temper. But Bigger has dreams. Near the beginning of the book, he and his friend watch an airplane writing an advertisement overhead, and he remarks that he would want to fly planes. But he knows that, as a black man (with a criminal record, not that it made a difference at that time), he'd never be allowed to fly. He lives in the cramp, overpriced South Side of Chicago, an area designated for black citizens by the wealthy real estate company owners.

Bigger, through a relief program (think: welfare), gets a private job for one such wealthy real estate owner, Henry Dalton. Dalton has a big house, a nice but practical car, a cook, and a personal maid for his blind wife. He gives a lot of money to "Negroes" through charities, and certainly isn't shy about sharing this information with a disinterested Bigger when he comes for his interview. Bigger knows that he's getting a comparatively sweet deal at the Daltons, who offer him his own private room, meals, and a personal weekly allowance in addition to the pay that would go directly to his struggling mother. Bigger is even "trusted" to begin working that very night, by driving Dalton's college-aged daughter Mary to a school event.

Mary, Bigger sees from the start, is "wild." She is a "Communist sympathizer," and Bigger, uncomfortable with the way that she and her Communist boyfriend Jan talk to him (making attempts to treat him as an "equal," when all of his life, any white person not treating him with hostility was trying to trick him in some way). He drinks with them, and the alcohol only makes him more uncomfortable, not less. Bigger feels angry toward these people, and though his inner anger is violent, it doesn't seem like he would unleash it on them.

But then, Bigger is in a terrible situation. He has to drag Mary, too drunk to walk, to her bedroom. He almost gets caught in there by her mother, who stumbles in (not seeing him, of course). To understand the situation, one has to understand that if Mrs. Dalton were not blind, or if she knew he were there, she would have screamed. Though the Daltons seem like fairly reasonable people (though, it would seem, they attempt to cleanse themselves of their racial guilt in some unreasonable ways), it would have still looked like a situation that, in the minds of almost all white people at that time, would have been a nightmare. In fact, Bigger had kissed the drunken Mary...no harm in that. But at that time period, if drunken Mary had said something about it to her mother, he certainly would have been in more than a little bit of trouble.

So Bigger attempts to quiet Mary by shoving her pillow over her face. But then, he goes too far...and kills her. The irony of it is, as Bigger is reflecting on all of this as he attempts to cover his tracks, then as he is on the run, now that the situation is completely out of control, he now feels that he has more control over his destiny than he ever has in his life. At least, he feels this way until he is caught. The violence that he inflicts (mostly on Bessie, his girlfriend whom he intentionally kills later that night) gives him a false sense of control. Had he only killed her, he wouldn't have been hunted down in such a way as he was. But since he had killed a white woman, and the daughter of a wealthy and well-respected member of the community at that, he was a piece of shit, and mobs gathered and called for him to be lynched.

Though Bigger tried to pin the crime on Jan, Mary's Communist boyfriend, by claiming that he'd accompanied the girl to her room that night and by signing the fake ransom note with a communist symbol, Jan and his Communist friends wish to help him, and he is assigned a Jewish lawyer who is active in the Party. Max seems like the only person who tries to understand Bigger as a person, while the newspapers and prosecutors and mobs of angry white people keep calling him a "ape," "subhuman," depicting him as a violent rapist (though, admittedly, he did rape Bessie before killing her...she had said "no" as he had her in the abandoned building in which they were hiding). His crimes were monstrous, but he was charged and put to death for the wrong reasons. He deserved his fate, to be sure...however, as I followed his continued bad moves throughout the first two parts of the book, I found myself grappling with the same questions that Max presented in the third part.

Max isn't just trying to save Bigger's life. He feels  pretty certain that he won't even be able to do that. The state's attorney accuses Max of taking on the case to draw attention to the Party, and I think he is right about that. The Party is attempting to reach out to the black community, but because most white people have regarded "reds" as being bad, they don't have a great reputation on the South Side. Bigger is afraid of the Communist ideas that Jan presents to him over dinner...not because of the message, but simply for the fact that he is a "red," and Bigger is afraid of being associated with a "red," a group that he believes is even more looked down upon than black people. Max does seem to be sincerely sympathetic to the plight of the black community in the United States, and he takes on the fight in hopes of drawing attention to the fact that oppression and separation breeds hate, fear, and violence.

The question is, does that justify Bigger's actions? I don't think anyone would make that argument, but it does make them more understandable. Even though Max's arguments (which go on for pages and pages...I thought, enough already, until I had a look through the back of the book and saw how much of Max's, or rather Wright's, message was edited by publishers for so long) seem logical, the state attorney's racist tirade against Bigger is much better received. He is sentenced to death, and though he is able to find some sense of purpose in his death, Max doesn't seem so hopeful.

Less people deny the long-lasting effects of racism on individuals and communities. Hell, it's not like racism has ended or anything. But the stereotypes still prevail; "black men are violent," yet so many people don't bother to look at the root of the problem. Plus, so many people don't realize that media accounts are often biased, and that the US legal system is still infamously racist. Young white boys from "good families" (middle-class families) get away with the same things that send young black boys to detention centers, or worse. Certainly, our country has come a long way since Native Son was published in 1940. Our president is mixed-race. But anyone who would say that racism no longer exists is a willfully blind fool.

Now, here's something that struck me in this book. Max tells Bigger that the reason why the people in the mobs are so angry at him is because of the fact that he is a product of a racist and oppressive society...and they don't want to feel guilty about that. So the guilt, which they feel helpless to control, turns to rage, and they want nothing more than to get him out of their sight, out of their society, out of their world. I had never imagined that guilt itself would be the fuel of that rage. For me, feelings of guilt cause me to want to take action to make amends, to make things right...which I guess is what the Communists are attempting to do in the book. That's what the Daltons attempted to do as well, in their own misguided way. For guilt to manifest itself into violent rage...that's an idea that I never would have considered. I guess that Max, by trying to shove the truth into everyone's faces at the trial, was attempting to get people to own up to it and take responsibility. But his words fell on deaf ears.

Bigger Thomas is not a likable character. He is stubborn, moody, and he seems pretty selfish. He acts in a way that seems dangerously foolish, even before the situation with Mary. He is not dumb (though everyone attempts to depict him that way; the police and reporters cannot in any way fathom that no one else was "in on" Mary's murder), and he is not lazy, though it may be easy to see him that way at the start. He is a young man who has lost hope. He sees no point to his life. As with Kevin Katchadourian, he feels trapped and lashes out in violence. But he does not bask in the fame that it brings him...he is mortified by the descriptions of his crimes (some inaccurate) and the breaking down of his character into nothing more than an "ape," an animal. In the end, though he may still not be a likable person, he is understandable, even though he reflects that he feels that no one, not even Max, can understand him.

(on the left) South Side Chicago. These run-down flats are probably similar to the place where Bigger and his family lived. They had to pay more for rent than white people who lived in similar squalid conditions.

(Above)  One of the best-known images of Richard Wright. Though his works have always been considered controversial, Native Son was a best-seller in its time.