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Native Son

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Richard WrightNative Son (1939) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. It tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in utter poverty in a poor area on Chicago's South Side in the 1930s.Quick facts: Author, Country …While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright portrays a systemic inevitability behind them. Bigger's lawyer, Boris Max, makes the case that 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 formed them and told them since birth who exactly they were supposed to be."No American Negro exists", James Baldwin once wrote, "who does not have his private Bigger Thomas living in his skull." Frantz Fanon discusses the feeling in his 1952 essay, L'expérience vécue du noir (The Fact of Blackness). "In the end", writes Fanon, "Bigger Thomas acts. To put an end to his tension, he acts, he responds to the world's anticipation." The book was a successful and groundbreaking best seller. However, it was also criticized by Baldwin and others as ultimately advancing Bigger as a stereotype, not a real character.Plot summaryBook One: FearTwenty-year-old Bigger Thomas is a young black man living in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears. The room turns into a maelstrom, and after a violent chase, Bigger kills the animal with an iron skillet and terrorizes his sister Vera with the dead rat. She faints, and Mrs. Thomas scolds Bigger, who hates his family because they suffer and he cannot do anything about it.That evening, Bigger has to see Mr. Dalton, a white man, for a new job. Bigger's family depends on him. He would like to leave his responsibilities forever, but when he thinks of what to do, he only sees a blank wall.Bigger walks to a poolroom and meets his friend, Gus. Bigger tells him that every time he thinks about whites, he feels something terrible will happen to him. They meet other friends, G.H. and Jack, and plan a robbery. They are all afraid of attacking and stealing from a white man, but none of them wants to admit their concerns. Before the robbery, Bigger and Jack go to the movies. They are attracted to the world of wealthy whites in the newsreel and feel strangely moved by the tom-toms and the primitive black people in the film, yet also feel they are equal to those worlds. After the film, Bigger returns to the poolroom and attacks Gus violently, forcing him to lick his blade in a demeaning way to hide Bigger's own cowardice. The fight ends any chance of the robbery's occurring, and Bigger is vaguely conscious that he has done this intentionally.When he finally gets the job, Bigger does not know how to behave in Dalton's large and luxurious house. Mr. Dalton and his blind wife use strange words. They try to be kind to Bigger, but actually make him uncomfortable; Bigger does not know what they expect of him.Then their daughter, Mary, enters the room, asks Bigger why he does not belong to a union, and calls her father a "capitalist". Bigger does not know that word and is even more confused and afraid to lose the job. After the conversation, Peggy, an Irish cook, takes Bigger to his room and tells him the Daltons are a nice family, but he must avoid Mary's Communist friends. Bigger has never had a room for himself before.That night, he drives Mary around and meets her Communist boyfriend Jan. Throughout the evening, Jan and Mary talk to Bigger, oblige him to take them to the diner where his friends are, invite him to sit at their table, and tell him to call them by their first names. Bigger does not know how to respond to their requests and becomes frustrated, as he is simply their chauffeur for the night. At the diner, they buy a bottle of rum. Bigger drives throughout Washington Park, and Jan and Mary drink the rum and make out in the back seat. Jan and departs, but Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her bedroom when they arrive home. He is terrified someone will see him with her in his arms; however, he cannot resist the temptation of the forbidden, and he kisses her.Just then, the bedroom door opens, and Mrs. Dalton enters. Bigger knows she is blind but is terrified she will sense him there. Frightened of the consequences if he, a black man, were to be found in Mary's bedroom, he silences Mary by pressing a pillow into her face. Mary claws at Bigger's hands while Mrs. Dalton is in the room, trying to alert Bigger that she cannot breathe. Mrs. Dalton approaches the bed, smells alcohol in the air, scolds her daughter, and leaves. As Bigger removes the pillow, he realizes that Mary has suffocated to death. Bigger starts thinking frantically, and decides he will tell everyone that Jan, her Communist boyfriend, took Mary into the house that night. Thinking it will be better if Mary disappears as she was supposed to leave for Detroit in the morning, he decides in desperation to burn her body in the house's furnace. Her body would not originally fit through the furnace opening, but after decapitating it, Bigger finally manages to put the corpse inside. He adds extra coal to the furnace, leaves the corpse to burn, and goes home.Book Two: FlightBigger's current girlfriend Bessie suspects him of having done something to Mary. Bigger goes back to work.Mr. Dalton has called a private detective, Mr. Britten. Britten interrogates Bigger accusingly, but Dalton vouches for Bigger. Bigger relates the events of the previous evening in a way calculated to throw suspicion on Jan, knowing Mr. Dalton dislikes Jan because he is a Communist. When Britten finds Jan, he puts the boy and Bigger in the same room and confronts them with their conflicting stories. Jan is surprised by Bigger's story but offers him help.Bigger storms away from the Daltons'. He decides to write a false kidnapping note when he discovers Mr. Dalton owns the rat-infested flat Bigger's family rents. Bigger slips the note under the Daltons' front door and then returns to his room.When the Daltons receive the note, they contact the police, who take over the investigation from Britten, and journalists soon arrive at the house. Bigger is afraid, but he does not want to leave. In the afternoon, he is ordered to take the ashes out of the furnace and make a new fire. He is terrified and starts poking the ashes with the shovel until the whole room is full of smoke. Furious, one of the journalists takes the shovel and pushes Bigger aside. He immediately finds the remains of Mary's bones and an earring in the furnace, and Bigger flees.Bigger goes directly to Bessie and tells her the whole story. Bessie realizes that white people will think he raped the girl before killing her. They leave together, but Bigger has to drag Bessie around because she is paralyzed by fear. When they lie down together in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides he has to kill her in her sleep. He hits Bessie on the head with a brick before throwing her through a window and into an air shaft. He quickly realizes that the money he had taken from Mary's purse was in Bessie's pocket.Bigger runs through the city. He sees newspaper headlines concerning the crime and overhears different conversations about it. Whites hate him and blacks hate him because he brought shame on the black race. After a wild chase over the rooftops of the city, the police catch him.Book Three: FateDuring his first few days in prison, Bigger does not eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Then Jan comes to visit him. He says Bigger has taught him a lot about black-white relationships and offers him the help of a Communist lawyer named Boris Max. In the long hours Max and Bigger spend talking, Bigger starts understanding his relationships with his family and with the world. He acknowledges his fury, his need for a future, and his wish for a meaningful life. He reconsiders his attitudes about white people, whether they are aggressive like Britten, or accepting like Jan.Bigger is found guilty in front of the court and sentenced to death for murder. However, at the end of the novel, he appears to come to terms with his fate.

Bigger Mary Bigger's Dalton Black Room Mr Jan