Native Son by Richard WrightMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
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.
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