Bigger tells him that every time he thinks about whites, he feels something terrible will happen to him.

He would like to leave his responsibilities forever, but when he thinks of what to do, he only sees a blank wall.īigger walks to a poolroom and meets his friend, Gus. Thomas scolds Bigger, who hates his family because they suffer and he cannot do anything about it.

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.

Twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas lives in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. However, it was also criticized by Baldwin and others as ultimately advancing Bigger as a stereotype, and not a real character. 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. 'In the end', writes Fanon, 'Bigger Thomas acts. '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). 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. While not apologizing for Bigger's crimes, Wright portrays a systemic causation behind them. 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. It went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America.Native Son (1940) is a novel written by the American author Richard Wright. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause célèbre in an ever-narrowing endgame.įirst published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Reckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. ' possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction' Ralph Ellison Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month.

Native son by richard wright