This was a difficult but important book to read. The essay at the end, entitled “How Bigger was Born,” is equal parts an exploration of Wright’s creative process and a klaxon sounding against white ignorance of the black experience. When Wright began this essay talking about the overused trumped-up charge of r*pe levied against black men in the Jim Crow era, I couldn’t help but think of the reaction of many conservative whites to #MeToo, to the effect that they were worried that their sons’ or their own lives would be ruined by false accusations of sexual misconduct. Wright would surely say something to the effect of “Now, you understand something of what we’ve been going through.” I don’t recall if there were any black commentators who made this point, but it wouldn’t surprise me. A key difference, of course, is that the vast majority of mostly powerful whites who were accused were likely guilty, whereas the vast majority of kostly powerless blacks were likely innocent.

I also recognized some parallels to Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984: a strong desire to rebel against an oppressive system, couched even in terms of violence, but ultimately the same fate and failure. ( )

well DAMN. ( )

A young sociopath kills a white woman he barely knows, by accident, dismembers her and burns her body, then rapes and kills his own girlfriend. He is hunted down and captured, pleads guilty and goes to trial for the murder of the white woman. The man's race is used as a convenient explanation for his crimes, while his case is picked up by various people with their own agendas as a tool for their use. The fact that Wright is drawing on his own experiences as a Black man during the depression makes this book stronger, but the trial and justice system stuff in the third part is tedious and needed more editing. It seems pretty obvious that the boy Bigger is supposed to be assumed to have been pushed by racism to become a violent criminal, even though he has friends and family who are not killers and rapists despite living in the same environment. He seems to feel no remorse for his crimes. While the fact that his rape and murder of his girlfriend seems less important to the white people involved in the case, Bigger doesn't even seem to think about Bessie as a human being, just something that got in the way and needed to be discarded.
As far as social commentary, though, this book does show a good argument for the importance of education and economic equity. The fact that Bigger and his friends and family are so poorly educated makes them more vulnerable to mistreatment by people with more education, and their lack of education makes it harder for them to make good decisions that improve their lives. Another interesting argument from this story would be the importance of purpose in men's lives. The poor women in this story, with the responsibilities on their shoulders to keep themselves and their households functional, seem less inclined to resort to stupid criminal acts with high risks. The one truly irresponsible woman in this book, Mary, is living a pampered life similar to Bigger's, in that any mistakes she makes are dealt with by her parents or other responsible adults. Both Mary and Bigger can continue to act immature and irresponsible, at least until Bigger murders Mary and thus creates consequences even his mother and Bessie can't rescue him from. ( )

I read this for this year's Book Riot Read Harder Challenge.
This was my entry for "Read a classic by an author of color." I highly recommend it. I'm also studying the performance of justice in fiction and how it's skewed along color lines. Native Son definitely digs deep into that. ( )

I don't have any qualms calling this a masterpiece, despite the rough start I had with it.

Honestly, this book is reminiscent of so many books that I absolutely love. It's similar to Dostoyevksi and Kafka in the sense of wallowing in anxious misery and self loathing (I'm a sucker for a good story about anxious misery and self loathing). Similar to Invisible Man for it's examination of the racial divide and themes of black identity. Similar to to The Stranger, for it's plot and structure.

It is a brilliant critique on the racial divide in America. Excellently paced. Despite the dense themes, and unsympathetic protagonist, this book was an engaging page turner, and kept me on the edge of my seat. I'm not ashamed to admit I lost sleep over it a few nights, with empathetic anxiety.

I'd recommend it to anyone, with the caveat that the first 30 or so pages are a bit rough, but push through. ( )

(34) My zeal for classic fiction has waned, but I still endeavor to be well-read and tackle several works of literature deemed to be influential, and/or highly regarded every year. My social justice lens has become cracked and soiled as of late so I am doing my best to read or re-read work by black authors. I realize that while I have read many novels by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, I have virtually read nothing by black male writers. So, 'Native Son,' a gripping tale of a poor black boy from the the Deep South transplanted to the slums of South Side Chicago - Bigger Thomas. He gets a job as a chauffeur for a do-good rich white family... and let's just say, it doesn't end well.

The beginning of the book is horrifying and burned in my brain. Aah! The furnace. The hatchet. Why? Oh God.. it is tragic. The scene with he and Bessie in the abandoned tenement and the raging blizzard outside was equally as dramatic. His icy travails over the rooftops of Chicago. I couldn't put the novel down for quite sometime. But after Bigger got arrested the book went downhill. I feel that Wright then began to explain ad nauseam using unrealistic scenes such as having everyone he ever knew in his life visit him in jail at the same time; and loong speeches by his lawyer Max. The book became a chore and less convincing. I could feel why Bigger behaved as he did, not sure I needed to be told. His writing for the first half of the novel spoke for itself.

I hated it for Bigger. He never had a chance. And I get that plenty of people grow up with even worse adversity and make something of their lives. Not everyone would choose to do what he did. But still. You can see it in the eyes of inner city black boys and rural white ones that get a shitty education surrounded by embittered adults who live shitty little lives - boredom, hopelessness, rage. A worthy read that is one half gripping, one half slog. ( )

A native of poverty and having learned to survive on the streets gets a job for a rich family, has his luck changed? Native Son by Richard Wright tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a black youth living in a poor area of 1930s Chicago South Side.

Even with an introductory warning, this novel begins in a harsh mood with unlikeable characters and doesn’t improve as the narrative continues and more characters appear. Bigger is a thug other thugs look down on, which while Wright’s intention doesn’t take away the fact the reader has to deal with this character for roughly 430 pages even with a few near misses of sympathy. Of Bigger’s two victims, his girlfriend Bessie is frankly the better character than Mary Dalton as the latter is a foolish white knight that talks in “code” believing every black person would know said code. The only character that is anyway decent is Bigger’s lawyer Boris Max that is the primary character in the third part of the book, even though he’s idealistic he’s smart enough to face reality by knowing Bigger has only 0.001% of staying alive and does everything he can against the odds to do so. Personally Max comes off as a surrogate for the author than Bigger does, which is why that particular character comes off as the best one in the book.

Native Son is a controversial yet well-known novel and is Richard Wright’s best fictional work, but as soon as I started reading it, I hated everyone in it. ( )

If I look at Native Son simply as a novel, it is a good one, inspired by Crime and Punishment, but set in the context of racial segregation in Depression-era Chicago. The crux of the plot is a murder committed involuntarily by a young African American, Bigger Thomas, out of fear of being found with a young white woman, Mary, in her bedroom, and the prevailing psychological mood of resentment at racial injustice, segregation, hostility, and contempt is compelling. But if I look at the novel as a message, I do not know quite how to take it. Richard Wright wrote with the intention of telling readers "what had made [Bigger] and what he meant." His explanation would have been easier to grasp had he written a straightforward protest novel about an innocent victim. The trouble is that Bigger is so malicious, and therefore the suggestion that racism made him what he was is so much harder to accept. He sexually assaults Mary; he feels sexualized misogynism towards Bessie, and rapes and murders her; he plots to get ransom money for the woman he has already killed and hidden; he experiences having murdered a white woman as catharsis for the racism the white world has shown towards him (e.g. "It was not Mary he was reacting to when he felt that fear and shame. Mary had served to set off his emotions, emotions conditioned by many Marys. And now that he had killed Mary he felt a lessening of tension in his muscles; he had shed an invisible burden he had long carried"; e.g. "He looked ... round at the white faces near him. He wanted suddenly to stand up and shout, telling them that he had killed a rich white girl..."; e.g. "In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful thing that had ever happened to him. He was living, truly and deeply ... never had his will been so free.") Wright seems to be saying that racial segregation could make a person not just depressed, bitter, angry, rebellious, militant, or despondent... but evil. "He had been so conditioned in a cramped environment that hard words or knocks alone knocked him upright or made him capable of action--action that was futile because the world was too much for him. It was then that he closed his eyes and struck out blindly, hitting what or whom he could, not looking or caring what or who hit back."

How does a reader handle Wright's apparent message that racism could drive an African American man to feel murder of a white woman as a self-actualizing accomplishment? What do we do with a novel that brilliantly announces the psychological experience of racism, but then goes so far in its picture of racism's impact that it seems like a drastic indictment of its victims as teetering on the edge of psychopathy? If racism did that to a person, then what was Wright saying about African Americans? Hence reactions like this one from writer David Bradley. First his early take on the book: "Suddenly I realized that many readers of 'Native Son' had seen Bigger Thomas as a symbol; in 1940, when 'Native Son' hit the shelves, they ... had probably never come into enough contact with blacks to know better. God, I thought, they think we're all Biggers." Then his evolved take: even if the novel should not be taken as a sociological report, "[i]t reminds us of a time in this land of freedom when a man could have this bleak and frightening vision of his people, and when we had so little contact with one another that that vision could be accepted as fact." He could not accept Bigger's character or its genesis as a realistic picture of the African American experience, and thereby drew this response from Wright's daughter excoriating him as a denialist: "We all have a Bigger Thomas crouching within us, although there are those, like Mr. Bradley, who need to kill Bigger on paper rather than recognize him as part of their own darkness. Mr. Bradley segregates Bigger in the farthest corner of his mind, denies him, projects him outward and lynches him. But haven't we discovered that the outward projection of shadows within is the very foundation of segregationist thought?"

It is hard to go all the way with Wright. Bigger's advocate tells the court at his trial: "Every hope is a plan for insurrection. Every glance of the eye is a threat. His very existence is a crime against the state." Here we are in the realm of social protest. But the defense, such as it is, goes on: "He was impelled toward murder as much through the thirst for excitement, exultation, and elation as he was through fear! It was his way of living!" and "Is love possible to the life of a man I've described to this Court? . . . The circumstances of his life and [Bessie's] would not allow it." This is beyond protest; it is exposing how inhumanity has made the victim inhumane. Are we to accept Wright's picture of a man's mind under racism so far as to believe that its victims are so warped by it as to exult in murder and be incapable of love? If so, this novel may constitute the deepest of all protests against racism. ( )

17. Native Son by Richard Wright
Introduction : Caryl Phillips (2000)
published: 1940
format: 464-page paperback
acquired: February 2022 read: Feb 20 – Mar 11 time reading: 15:17, 2.0 mpp
rating: 4½
genre/style: classic novel theme: Richard Wright
locations: 1930’s Chicago
about the author: American author born on a Mississippi plantation, 1908-1960

A dark classic look at American racism in fiction. Richard Wright wrote for purpose. He was determined force the reader's eye coldly on the hard fact of racism. No cushion of sympathy, or pity, he draws the reader in so we can't look away, holds us by force of the novel, looking wide-eyed and horrified.

The first 200 pages of this novel were as intense as anything I have ever read. But it wasn't fun, it was awful, painful, yet still compelling. This is his masterpiece. Bigger Thomas, like the strongest of Shakespeare's villains, is all calculation and doomed for lack of consequential foresight. We're in a tragedy, but our villain is not part of noble house maneuvering for power, he is confined in all space, physical and mental, by white American racism. He acts within and against these confines, and when he crosses a line, he thinks only how to clean it up and get away. And it's here, Fargo-like, or Parasite-like, to name a couple movies, Wright leaves us. Shocked, stunned, trapped strangely in slow motion, horrified.

Mixing a few books at a time, I put the book down there (exhausted). When I picked it back up, the worst of the intense horror was past, but the book still had another 200 awkward pages of consequences, and contemplation, mentally search for ways to come to terms, and, even more awkwardly, toying with communist concepts. Bigger enters the legal system defended, without cost, by a Jewish American communist.

There is a nothing perfect in this book. It goes from evocative to uncomfortably horrific to oddly awkward. It doesn't fail. I was able to coast through these last 200 pages, and think about all that had happened, but it's a strange way to wrap this up.

Wright wanted to create a look at the human cost of racism without pity - and it certainly has done something of that sort. Five yucky stars for those first uncomfortable 200 pages, but less for the work overall.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/348551#8097035 ( )

Good novel of the black experience and injustice. ( )

“…she was dead; she was white; she was a woman; he had killed her; he was black; he might get caught; he did not want to be caught; if he were they would kill him.”

Bigger Thomas - a black man trapped in a white man's world. Angry, for so many reasons, and scared, for many of those same reasons. When those emotions collide, and he acts out, his world collapses. And it's not just Bigger who suffers. The wide social implications of his actions, steeped in racism, effect other Black members of his community and, of course, his family. This book delves deeply into the reasons why Bigger does what he does, and why the world in which he lives in is partly, if not mostly, responsible. It is as important a book to read now as it was when it was first written. If not more so...

“How on earth are you going to change men’s hearts when the newspapers are fanning hate into them every day?” Jan asked. A question that still remains unanswered today. ( )

Published in 1940, this book provides social commentary on race relations in the US. Protagonist Bigger Thomas commits a crime, though he never intended for it to happen. The story relates what happens in the aftermath. I am not a lawyer, but I am pretty sure what is spoken at the trial would not be allowed in present day (though I have no idea what would have been permitted in 1940). Nevertheless, the author is trying to make a point, and he makes it well. Many of these racial issues are (sadly) still relevant. I listened to the audio book. Peter Francis James does an amazing job with the voice acting – the distinct voices, inflection, and clarity are simply outstanding! I can see why this book is considered a classic. ( )

Summary: The story of Bigger Thomas, whose unpremeditated murder of Mary Dalton and second murder covering up the first, fires rage and fear in Chicago, and in a strange way gives meaning to a young man who felt himself imprisoned in Chicago’s Black Belt.

This is an uncomfortable book to read from the moment Bigger Thomas wakes up until the last pages. It is uncomfortable to view the rat-infested tenement room a family of four share, where Bigger’s first act is to kill a giant rat with a pan.

It is uncomfortable to hear Bigger’s mother nag him about going to the job set up by the relief program. He already has a record for theft, some of which he’s involved his girlfriend Bessie in.

It’s uncomfortable to hear him plot to rob a white jeweler with his three friends. Then when one doesn’t show up on time, he nearly slits his throat in anger.

It’s uncomfortable to go to the Daltons and be treated so well by the family and other household staff. Mr. Dalton has an interest in the companies operating the tenement housing Bigger lives in, confining Blacks to one area of south Chicago known as the Black Belt. He also gives lots of money to charities for the uplift of Blacks and employs people recommended by the relief agency who sent Bigger–an uncomfortable tension of interests that emerges as the story unfolds.

It’s uncomfortable to see Bigger on his first chauffeuring job, supposedly taking Mary Dalton, the Dalton’s only daughter to a lecture, but in reality to a rendezvous with a Communist lover, Jan. We sense Bigger’s discomfort as he takes them to a south side restaurant to eat “his kind of food,” and invited to socialize with them while proselytized into the Communist cause. We sense his discomfort as Jan drives with all of them in the front seat, then as they drink while he drives.

It’s uncomfortable to see Bigger having to help the drunken Mary into the house, and up to her room, getting her to bed, only to have her blind mother come in to this incriminating scene. We sense his discomfort as he tries to silence her so her mother won’t discover his presence and think Mary asleep in a drunken stupor, and when Mrs. Dalton leaves, to find he has asphyxiated her and she is dead.

It’s uncomfortable to witness Bigger’s desperation which leads him to stuff her in the trunk she’s taking to Detroit, to haul it to the basement and stuff her body into the coal furnace, hacking off her head so it would all fit, and then feeding the fire but fearing to remove the ashes for what he might find.

It’s uncomfortable as Mary’s disappearance becomes known to watch Bigger deflect suspicions toward Jan while involving his girlfriend in a ransom plot, ultimately telling her what he’s done, and then as Mary’s bones are found in the furnace ashes, fleeing with Bessie to an abandoned building where he has sex with her then kills her with a brick and throws her down an airshaft, where she did not immediately die.

It’s uncomfortable to see the police cordon close around him, then the final futile efforts to elude capture. It’s uncomfortable to hear the racist vitriol, of crowds who would lynch him and a prosecutor who charges him with rape as well as murder.

It’s uncomfortable to hear him tell his communist attorney, Mr. Max, how, for a brief moment, when he killed, he felt his most free and alive, how in these moments, he found meaning, a momentary escape from the destiny to which his birth and race, in his own mind, had imprisoned him.

His relationship with his attorney, who made an impassioned plea before the court for his life, is the one shining moment. Someone who asked him questions, and listened, and treated him as a man. No one understands more of his life than this man. But he is not a confessor. While Bigger tells the truth of what he had done, there was no remorse, no repentance.

We want to argue that Bigger could have made different choices. Yet the sense is of a human being trapped–in a tenement, into reliance on white charity, in an awkward social situation with two people with no clue who “mean well,” in Mary Dalton’s bedroom where no good explanation could be made for his presence. We’re rightly horrified by the murders, but also at the logic by which Bigger finds meaning in them.

We’re left uncomfortable with social structures that the execution of this young killer will not change. We’re left uncomfortable with the thought of how many other Biggers lurk in such structures–also wanting to do things with their lives, also questing for meaning, perhaps in distorted ways that will end badly for them and others. And this is as it should be. A minister friend of mine once remarked that he believed the gospel not only offered comfort to the disturbed but also disturbed the comfortable. This book does the latter. Don’t read it if you want to remain in comfort. ( )

Here's what I recorded about this in 2008: "From Andrew Himes, amazon.com: 'Wright's genius was that, in preventing us from feeling pity for (the young black man in America's 1930's) Bigger, he forced us to confront the hopelessness, misery, and injustice of the society that gave birth to him.' " ( )

An excellent novel, and important novel, an astonishingly relevant novel. Also maybe the bleakest thing I've ever read. ( )

The writing in this book was inconsistent, but the good writing was excellent. Wright presented a very negative protagonist in a way that I was able to feel deeply for him. I also learned so much about the personal results of constant oppression and treating people in an other, degrading manner. ( )

Plot is interesting and the concepts the author reveals are interesting, but the writing is a bit over the top for me. ( )

This, the first novel about the black community by the black community in the US, was a page-turner as relevant now as when it was written during WW2. It’s incredible actually, given recent events, that despite a book like this being written, published and widely-known, little seems to have changed for the community whose cries it voices.

The tale of Bigger Thomas and his inexorable plunge into despair is not one you will forget easily. Despite some flaws in the telling which Wright readily admits in his introduction, the events unfold with a clarity that allows you to see the full weight of society stacked against the black community of Chicago.

By keeping the narrative firmly in Bigger’s head, Wright conveys exactly why the oppressed might perceive even acts of kindness as threats. And Wright knew this too well himself. As an orphan, he suffered trauma and as a foster carer, my training and experience tells that trauma can make the most inocuous behaviour of others seems threatening. Because of this, the victim can behave in ways which the untraumatised find perplexing and even self-defeating. Empathy soon trickles away to be replaced by fear… and containment.

But Wright is not simply giving expression to the impact of trauma on an individual, he’s confronting us with the horror of trauma on an entire people group. When considered in those terms, it’s not hard to see why the race issue in the US continues to be a festering sore from which it cannot seem to heal itself.

It’s an excellent book that should be more widely read. I wonder if it’s experiencing a revival in the wake of BLM. But those who read it might simply use it to scream louder and the debate is already a shouting match. Understanding the race issue in the US in terms of trauma, if it is a way forward, is going to take a lot of time, skill and understanding. I wonder if there’ll be any qualitative change by the time the 100th anniversary of Native‘s publication. I doubt it. ( )

black boy murders white woman and flees

A man who feels the world against him gets a lucky break and proceeds to throw it all away. An interesting look at the racial differences from inner city to the upper class. The lawyers statements still hold true today in how some people feel about the racial divide and what separates the races. Richard Wright's writing is as true today as when this book was written, 1940. ( )

Historically, this work was written before the Civil Rights era (1940) and shed light on the terrible social circumstances that pervaded African-American life in the North. Set in Chicago shortly after the Great Migration, it portrays what we now would characterize as systemic racism – the realities of a dysfunctional society. A black everyman has his life cast away by a lack of opportunity to make his life count for something. It can remind today’s readers of the progress that has been made and the progress which still must be made.

In this tale, Bigger Thomas at first seems headed to jail for only petty theft; then soon, he is in trouble for murder. Ironically, committing murder for Thomas was the most enlivening act of his life, for it was an act in which he took full responsibility of making a decision. With only an eighth-grade education and the wrong color of skin, Thomas did not have much opportunity, and the opportunities presented him were still less than that presented to most white folk.

In the author’s telling, Thomas’ actions seemed reasonable but simultaneously immoral. That quandary and contradiction creates tension and sympathy in the reader. In the final chapter, I read the case for and against the protagonist, and I could not help but agree with both accounts. It thus vividly portrayed what happens to oppressed people in seemingly intractable situations. The main remedy or next step, it seems, was awareness.

The original text, now preserved in my edition of the book, was too vivid for original readers in the 1940s, so Wright revised it so that it would reach a wide audience of a specific book club. The publisher thought that it would turn off pre-World-War-II American housewives who populated the book club. Fortunately, the book sold well and was eventually deemed a classic. Also fortunately, the original text was later re-discovered and disseminated to the reading public.

In an era when America’s systemic racism is regularly discussed in the news, this text provides an interesting and relevant historical nugget. It’s one of the first vivid portrayals of post-slavery African-American life. It reminds us that undoing America’s “original sin” of slavery requires more than just Constitutional amendments. Though this work might prove too seedy for grade-school students, it should not be neglected by the curious reader. Its seediness is not sensationalism but instead meaningful. We are not so far off Wright’s 1940-era Chicago that these type of situations do not remain. Rather, the setting’s similarity to the present day needs to be contemplated still. Few better resources for this task exist in America’s literary past than Native Son. ( )

Harrowing and eloquent. ( )

I first read Richard Wright in high school, I believe we read Black Boy, and his writing stuck with me all those years. I got my own copies of Native Son and Black Boy and now I'm reading them in the current era of racial injustice and Native Son is just as relevant and powerful as it was when it was published. It is a difficult read and Bigger Thomas is a complex character. There were times when I really could only read a few pages at a time, when saw the terrible things coming and so wanted there to be better answers. It's a brilliant novel, thought-provoking. I found the ending esp. moving and really did need to sit and think for a long while afterward.

When I started listening to this book I could understand why others could not finish it. It grabbed at my stomach. I became tense. I could hardly stand to hear another word.

Why? Because the main character, Bigger Thomas, makes some very bad decisions and we are right there with him. It is 1940 and the world of the young black man - or any black person, really - in the U.S. was severely limited, both literally and practically. It was the world where the so-called Uncle Toms made their way by playing the part of the subservient, meek negro and those who dared to think beyond that place were quickly condemned. It was a time when only apartments on the south side of Chicago were available for rent to blacks, and the rent was higher than it was for equivalent housing for whites. It was a time when, essentially, the black man was defined by the white man.

So when Bigger commits a horrendous crime we know how this story ends.

I stayed with it in spite of not liking Bigger because I sensed that there was something more to be learned here. And I was right. Wright, who was able to publish this book because of his participation in the Federal Writers Project, was a voracious reader. All the reading was his education and his training in writing.

In a way it seemed to me that Wright may have overtold Bigger's thoughts or perhaps stated them too clearly, but that did not detract from the book, for me. That is, we listen in on his thoughts all the time, and on occasion I wondered, would he have been able to draw these conclusions, to understand his actions as well as he says? Maybe not, but it is certainly illuminating to me. And although this was a different time and much has changed, there is still a message or two here for today.

****spoiler alert*****Don't go here if you haven't read it or don't intend to****

What Bigger explains after he has been caught for the murder of a white woman is that the act changed him forever. For the first time in his life he felt free. He did not feel remorse, he felt free. I think I understand this. It is not an excuse for killing but it explains a lot else. ( )

The author makes a statement about the effects of discrimination and poverty, and it’s certainly dramatic, yet I don’t think he adequately explains, (at least to those who don’t live in Bigger’s shoes) why Bigger committed such egregious crimes. Bigger is also not portrayed in a sympathetic light, even to his own family and friends, so I was confused as to the author’s intentions. ( )