Wednesday, July 10, 2019

Back to the Classics Challenge: Native Son

I chose this book for the 20TH Century Classic category for Karen’s Back to the Classics 2019 Challenge at Books and Chocolate.  This was a very uncompromising book about the life of a young black man in Chicago in the late 1930s who commits two horrific crimes.    The book was surely controversial when it was first published in 1940 and I would argue it is still so now.  
“He had done this. He had brought all this about. In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him.” 
“But what was he after? What did he want? What did he love and what did he hate? He did not know. There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had; something spread out in front of him and something spread out in back; and never in all his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together; never had he felt a sense of wholeness.”
The story starts off with Bigger killing a rat in the shabby one room he shares with his mother, sister and brother. On that same day, Bigger will go for a job interview with Mr. Dalton, the kindly white man who wants to help Negros by giving them menial jobs and donating ping pong tables to community centers in black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Mr. Dalton owns the company that rents that crappy one room to Bigger’s mother in one of the few crowded neighborhood where blacks are "allowed" to live in Chicago. Even when confronted with this fact later in the book, Mr. Dalton does not understand how no amount of ping pong tables will make up for that kind of systemic racism and discrimination.  

This book is terribly frustrating to read. Bigger goes to work for the Daltons as a chauffeur, which really is an excellent opportunity for him and he destroys that opportunity. But the reader also sees where Bigger is overwhelmed culturally, out of his element, so much so that he can’t consider any options, any other way of behaving. He knows how to act in his black neighborhood where he is a bully motivated mostly by fear, but he is flummoxed in the world of white people. And equally, many of the white people with whom he interacts don’t understand either that he comes from what might as well be a different universe from them. The view into Bigger’s thoughts and motivations do not excuse his actions, but they do help make them understandable. Even if throughout the book the reader wants to step in and set him straight constantly. 

The weakest part of the book for me was the endless, rousing closing argument made by Bigger’s lawyer at his trial. It’s a little too over-the-top and over long with its message when the book was doing just fine before I thought.  I’m not sure if Wright didn’t trust his readers to get it or if he just wanted to preach his points. Still, this is a book very much worth reading and still unfortunately relevant. I'm glad to have read it. I think next I need to check out James Baldwin's Notes from a Native Son which contains an essay about this novel. 

18 comments:

  1. It is such a painful novel to read, but powerful. I've been thinking about rereading it since I reread Invisible Man relatively recently.

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    1. Thanks for the comment reese! It is a painful novel to read. I should switch places with you and re-read Invisible Man. I read it in high school, decades ago and should look at it again with adult eyes.

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  2. Hi Ruthiella, excellent commentary and based on your review I would really like to read Native Son. I wonder though if the two murders Bigger commits might have ended up overshadowing the story Richard Wright wanted to tell. Does the reader lose sympathy with Bigger because of these murders? James Baldwin is tremendous and I highly recommend The Fire Next Time, Go Tell it on a Mountain or anything he writes.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Kathy. The reader has to try very hard to maintain any sympathy for Bigger...even before he commits the murders. That is part of why the book is so difficult to read.

      Thanks for the recommendations on Baldwin. I have read Go Tell it on the Mountain, which was great! I need to follow that up with more books by Baldwin.

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  3. I've never read Native Son. The fact that things have not changed enough would make it even more painful to read now. We would like to believe things have improved, but in so many ways there are still two different universes.

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    1. Thanks for the comment jenclair! I agree, reading this book in light of the Black Lives Matter movement makes it even more painful to read.

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  4. Thanks for this review
    It's brought this book to my attention.
    And while there's still two universes, there's many universes in America, the poor,the homeless,the illegal,the Hispanic,Asian.
    It's time I read James Baldwin, or this one.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Silvia! You are so right, America is made up of many groups of people who have the right to equal representation. The beauty of books and other forms of media is that they allow us to experience a universe different from our own and hopefully gain some empathy.

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    2. I believe so. If we read more, we probably increase our empathy, understanding, and that will provoke love for the "other", - which is so needed at a time when we seem so upset and offended by those with different beliefs.

      I have experienced great admiration and respect here among the reading community, even when we are as different as we come. Love for books is a great unifier and platform for a civilized exchange of thoughts.

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  5. It is sad that things haven't changed more over the years. I guess that's why it's good to continue to read books like this one.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Lark! Absolutely, that is one of the reasons I read books...to provide insight in to the past and also our present, for better or worse.

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  6. Hi Ruthiella,
    You wrote this post some time ago, so I'm not sure you'll see my response. I haven't read Native Son, but like you, I read The Invisible Man during my sophomore year in high school. I was 15, and I read every word, but really I did not have the maturity to fully grasp it, despite my struggle to do so.
    The year was the spring of 1969 with lots going on, and politically speaking, I was totally with it, but sometimes literature is harder, and I do think The Invisible Man is challenging for teens.
    Your comments about Native Son are fascinating. I will have to look up the year it was published. Thank you for reviewing it.

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    1. Dumb old me, As you pointed out in your review, it was published in 1940. That amazes me. And The Invisible Man in 1952--that floors me! Yikes.

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    2. Thanks for the comment Judith! I read Ellison's Invisible Man as a senior in 1983 and I didn't have the maturity necessary to get the full import of the book either. I really should re-read it. I read a few books as a teenager that would benefit from a re-visit as an adult with more knowledge of the world!

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  7. I read this in high school, during a time when I was enamored with Gone With the Wind. I have to say that painful as it was to read, it helped me move out of the enamored stage and understand that America wasn't a friendly place for most African-Americans.

    Excellent review.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Jane! Yes, Native Son does jar one out of complacency for sure. And as much as I enjoyed GWTW, I do think the novel did want to believe (the author not Scarlett) that African-Americans preferred the "comfort" of slavery over the uncertainty of freedom.

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  8. This book so impressed me, too, when I first read it years ago. I hope to reread it one of these days. I agree that the plot and its circumstances did enough to support the author's argument...and I think remember the attorney's monologue was unnecessarily preachy. Nonetheless, this was an excellent book.

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    1. Thanks for the comment Ruth! I think maybe the author was a little enamored of the speech ha gave the lawyer and that's why it stayed. But still, I agree with you an excellent book and one very deserving of the category of "classic".

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