It made impossible a repetition of the old lies brought out into the open, as no one ever had before, the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled and may yet destroy our culture." As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. That is not to say that Richard Wright created a novel free of flaws, but that he wrote the first novel that successfully told the most painful and unvarnished truth about American social and class relations. And yet.Ī more compelling story than Native Son has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. There is no help for him-not from his hapless family not from liberal do-gooders or from his well-meaning yet naive friend Jan certainly not from the police, prosecutors, or judges. As a young black man in the Chicago of the '30s, he has no way out of the walls of poverty and racism that surround him, and after he murders a young white woman in a moment of panic, these walls begin to close in. Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension.
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