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.