Essays on Native Son

Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, both African American authors active in the middle of the twentieth century, took on the challenge of exploring and exposing the adversity that African Americans faced through their writing. They brought to light the issues of discrimination and the negative...

Existentialism emphasizes the existence of the individual person as a free and responsible agent determining their own development through acts of the will. Contrarily, environmental determinism suggests that society shapes individuals, allowing for little personal motive. In Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, a young black...

A preacher enters the cell of a young man condemned by all before the trial has even begun, and begins powerfully exhorting the young man to give himself to the Lord Jesus and be redeemed. And yet this young man, standing at the very edge...

In Book One of Richard Wrights novel “Native Son,” Mary Dalton is, to her parents’ disapproval, a member of the Communist movement set in 1930’s Chicago. Mary attempts to achieve her dream of extinguishing the barriers between African-Americans and Caucasians by treating Bigger Thomas in...

In the Native Son, Richard Wright cultivates supporting characters as threats to the main character Bigger in ways that range from being highly significant to extremely minimal. In analyzing the way the African American women are represented in the novel we see a common negative...

Understanding the mindset and motivations of Richard Wright while writing Native Son proves to be important in understanding the effect of the novel on society. “Wright… was caught up in a hideous present moment, the Great Depression years and the Chicago black ghetto, when it...

Blindness is prevalent all throughout human society and more specifically, all throughout human nature. To be blind can mean a myriad of things. Literally and physically, it means to lack proper vision. When taking that definition to a figurative level, it means to fail to...

In his novel “Native Son,” author Richard Wright depicts the struggles of Bigger Thomas, whose life reaches a major turning point after he kills Mary Dalton. The difference between Bigger’s dreams and the “illusion” of reality plays a significant role throughout the novel. Bigger’s dreams...

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, exemplifies classic, African-American literature that raises serious questions about how deeply racial oppression damages Blacks. Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism exposes how racism subjects Blacks to the impotence assumed under determinism by denying nearly any confirmation of free will. Wright’s narrative depicts...

Fear is a common emotional thread woven deep within the fabric of mankind. It drives our actions, dictates our beliefs and sometimes, as in the case of Bigger Thomas, mandates the type of person we become. An old adage states that the single greatest source...

When writing The White Tiger and Native Son, Aravind Adiga and Richard Wright utilized setting to influence the plot of the novels, by having the stories of their characters happen in very regulated and controlling societies. Their extreme conditions push the protagonists to want to...

Jim Crow laws in 1930’s Chicago created a segregation system which prohibited African-Americans from restaurants, water fountains and even bathrooms that “belonged” to whites. In this setting, Richard Wright places his novel, Native Son, with one of the most monstrous characters to ever derive from...

In Native Son, the main issue for the main character, Bigger, is that he has killed Mary Dalton. However, just like many other elements throughout the novel, this issue is simply a surface level issue. The deeper problem is that Bigger wants to be free,...