Books : Native Son

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by: Richard Wright

: Native Son

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780061148507
ISBN: 0061148504
Label: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 544
Publication Date: May 01, 2008
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Release Date: April 29, 2008
Studio: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Sales Rank: 8845



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Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.



Amazon.com Review:
Bigger Thomas is doomed, trapped in a downward spiral that will lead to arrest, prison, or death, driven by despair, frustration, poverty, and incomprehension. 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. 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. Bigger is debased, aggressive, dangerous, and a violent criminal. As such, he has no claim upon our compassion or sympathy. And yet...

A more compelling story than Native Son has not been written in the 20th century by an American writer. 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. As Irving Howe asserted in 1963, "The day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever. It made impossible a repetition of the old lies [and] 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."

Other books had focused on the experience of growing up black in America--including Wright's own highly successful Uncle Tom's Children, a collection of five stories that focused on the victimization of blacks who transgressed the code of racial segregation. But they suffered from what he saw as a kind of lyrical idealism, setting up sympathetic black characters in oppressive situations and evoking the reader's pity. In Native Son, Wright was aiming at something more. In Bigger, he created a character so damaged by racism and poverty, with dreams so perverted, and with human sensibilities so eroded, that he has no claim on the reader's compassion:
"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! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Bigger's voice was full of frenzied anguish. "It must have been good! When a man kills, it's for something... I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em. It's the truth..."
Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him. --Andrew Himes



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - 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 ... Read More


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - 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 ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - 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 ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - 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 ... Read More


Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - 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.

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