Richard Wright’s Native Son dramatizes the experiences of the young African American, Bigger Thomas, whose lack of opportunity in a racist 1930’s Chicago sets him upon a destructive and naturalistic path. The result is the murder of two women and Bigger’s death in the electric chair. One of the novel’s most important motifs is the characters’ deep psychological internalization of their racist environment and the ways in which this internalization perpetuates a deleterious cycle of racism and negative behavior. Bigger’s clumsy attempts to navigate “a world he feared” result in a fractured psyche, his personality ruled by terror, shame, and hatred. Meanwhile, other characters’ failures to understand the reality of race relations in America contributes to the circumstances which result in Mary and Bessie’s murders, as well as Bigger’s wasted life. This paper explores the ways in which Wright elucidates the negative effects of racism on the psychological state of the work’s characters, often through symbolism and metaphor. It posits that in Native Son, Wright moves away from the pathetic appeal employed in his collection of short stories, Uncle Tom’s Children. Instead, Native Son appeals to logos, addressing Wright’s largely white 1940’s audience in a way that insists readers realistically confront their own understanding of race in America, especially if they believe themselves to be racially progressive. Through the limitations of the work’s white characters—demonstrated for example by Mrs. Dalton’s blindness—Wright demonstrates that the effects of racism are not only destructive to African Americans, but also to white Americans and society at large. Finally, through Bigger’s violent, fearful, and hateful characterization, Native Son confronts the effects of centuries of racially-based oppression, forever shattering the naïve illusion that the wrongs of the past and the inequities of the present might be easily mended, forgotten, and forgiven.
