Native Son

Native Son is a book about racism and poverty in America. The book centers around the life of Bigger Thomas, a young African-American who has grown up poor. He lives in a 1 bedroom dwelling with his mother and younger brother and sister. He gets a job as a chauffeur for a wealthy white family, but he resents them. Bigger has grown up being very aware of his dark skin and the difference between whites and blacks. Throughout the story we see how this awareness has affected all of the terrible decisions he makes. Bigger cannot even comprehend any act of kindness that is offered to him by his employers due to a life of receiving hatred from "their kind". Native Son takes transports you back to a time that America likes to forget about. It's not only a good read, but an important read for anyone wishing to understand why race is such a big issue in the USA.

The narration is only rivaled by the brilliance of the story. Fantastic experience.

Before happening upon this book, I had never heard of this author. I found it deeply moving. It is a profound portrait of the psychological and social wounds inflicted by racism. It was written some three-quarters of a century ago but have things changed all that much? Shame on us!

I really liked this book. Reminded me a lot of Crime and Punishment (need to reread that book at some point though). This took me longer than I thought mostly because it was intense. I mean it's about a back boy who murders two women and falsely accused of rape. It's hard to like any of the characters in the book. I think might be the point though and to show you the racism of whites to the blacks. Plus, this is a good crime novel.

This is an American masterpiece, sadly as relevant today as it was in 1940. This audio performance is also a masterpiece, and deeply, deeply moving. I listened to it with my 18-year-old daughter. If I were a high-school teacher, I would have my class listen to it. It is a powerful performance of a great text.

This was a really hard book to read. So much misunderstanding. What an awful time to live through.

An Excellent story with excellent narration . Im loving my subscription.

This was an impressive novel. First, it manages to capture, in the main character, a misfit who has been turned out from society, cast along the ruins of the poor and the downtrodden in an urban environment. Then, it manages to capture race dynamics between black and white people, the state and the individual, and the heart of delinquency and social status. The trial scenes were particularly powerful. I really enjoyed the grand speech, the grand finale per se, that was given in the courtroom. It was a great piece of rhetoric and writing. The analysis given by Wright after the book was also illuminating and provides some literary criticism and depth for the book.3.75- worth it!

The writing in this book was inconsistent, but the good writing was excellent. Wright presented a very negative protagonist in a way that I was able to feel deeply for him. I also learned so much about the personal results of constant oppression and treating people in an other, degrading manner.

Excellent read using the restored version. Wright gets long-winded during the trial scenes. The story is a vivid reminder of socio-political effects within our cultural history. Great fodder for ethical discussions about capital punishment.

The story here is hard to take, and somewhat pathetic, but it is a fast read with a worthwhile tale, and Wright's writing makes the entire thing, characters included, seem far too real. I'd recommend it highly, but realize that it's not something I'd set for highschoolers or children, or something that will make you feel better about humanity in general.

I listened to this on audio and turned it off a couple dozen times. Disturbing, How disturbing? It makes "Crime and Punishment" read like "Chicken Soup for the Soul". The graphic plot morphs into some very long sermons and finishes with a stunning literary scene. Stick with it.

Fantastic and important novel, bogged down a bit by a lengthy courtroom speech towards the end. The speech is important, don't get me wrong, and there are still plenty of people who need to read it (the whole "just work hard and you'll be successful" crowd), but it just dragged on what was a relentlessly intense and troubling book. I don't think there was any work of fiction like this before it was published in 1940, and I am certain it influenced more than a few civil rights leaders and activists in the 50s and 60s. I found Bigger's final realization about race relations to be especially compelling, and perhaps why the left fails to reach a good part of the white lower class (I don't want to give too much away.)

This novel successfully forces the reader to question the difference between right and wrong. Immediately, Wright gives the reader the portrait of a person (and his family) in horrible living conditions with no hope for a better life or an attempt at the American Dream. It is not long into the novel that Bigger is quickly confronted with an opportunity at upward mobility and his reaction is, naturally, distrust and rejection at those offers. Although we, as readers, are likely to question (and condemn) Bigger's actions, as the novel unfolds we find that all of these actions are part of a large problem. Wright does a masterful job of stopping short of telling us that Bigger's actions are justified in any way; instead, he focuses on why these things happen and how Bigger has been set up by a social structure that needs serious adjustment. One of the strongest political/social statements comes in the novels final 20-30 pages as Max gives his testimony in defense of Bigger. On top of all of the political and social messages that this novel has to offer, Wright has also created a character who is dealing with questions of his own existence and a strong desire to break out of that existence.

One of the great novels from the era, set the tone for many to follow, Wright was the father of African American civil rights literature. "There's a little Bigger in all of us".. Fate.

What I took away from this: Wright's concept of a guilt so dreadful that, in order to escape it, a man decides that the people that are the source of his guilt are something less than human. That way, they are easier to ignore. Or to kill. This novel packs a wallop. Shares an odd kinship with Dreiser's American Tragedy, another murder/fugitive from justice/courtroom melodrama in a naturalistic vein. Recommended.

The main character is Bigger Thomas, a big not-too-bright black man who gets caught up with rich communist white kids and gets into trouble.

I loved this in high school, but can't remember much now!

Wright's Native Son is a novel embodying a purely American existentialism. Bigger Thomas is a creature scrutinized and driven to rage by the nearly subconscious experience of his otherness. His actions are defined by the possible reactions of white people and the white establishment. His sickness in violence, and his rebellion is also violence. He cycles through feelings and attitudes of power, guilt, despair, and finally understanding. His true liberation is his final realization regarding the causation of his actions and what they mean, however horrendous. This is a novel that unflinchingly explores humanity, beyond color or class, by revealing the sickness of hatred on all sides.

I expected Native Son to be a social commentary on racism in 1940's America, and it was. But, in some ways it was not the novel I was expecting. After a somewhat predictable, start the novel took a bit of an unexpected turn and I found it to be an involving, suspenseful read. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is a poor, uneducated black man who hates the whites for being in control and is ashamed of his family’s poverty. He is always getting into trouble and soon Bigger must make some monumental decisions. At first I sympathized just a bit with Bigger as he chooses a path of deception, but his crimes soon escalate until I had no sympathy for the main character. Bigger redeems himself slightly at the end of the novel, when he must confront his own actions and determine where social conditioning ends and free will begins. Unfortunately, instead of relying on the plot alone to make a statement about how racial inequality and social injustice create conditions for violence in urban America, the author gets a bit preachy via the final statement of a Jewish lawyer who is affiliated with the Communist Party. This portion of the tale really drags down an otherwise gripping and insightful novel. I would recommend Native Son but would not blame you for skimming over a bit of the overlong courtroom speech.

Rated: B+Powerful book. Keeps you hoping things would turn out differently, but for this black American (Bigger Thomas) racial realities in the 1930's lead to a tragic story and ending.

Very dark and powerful novel often considered the top Black protest novel of the 20th century. It is a tragedy of epic proportions that in the process makes a very strong case for continued enslavement and oppression of Blacks by the White majority. Bigger, the main character, is an aimless and angry young man who gradually sinks deeper into crime after accidentally killing a White girl. Had Black/White relations been different, he would likely have never killed her. he story's pace quickens after the murder, as Bigger tries to keep from being blamed for the murder. The climax of the book comes in the courtroom, where he is being tried for his crimes. His attorney, a Jewish member of the Communist Part, in a prolonged defense statement lays out the whole reason that society produced a person like Bigger, and many other angry, violent Black men like him. A powerful and disturbing story.

Here is the scariest character in literature. Even Wright is terrified of him. I had this thought as I finished Native Son: I thought, "This is the bravest book I've ever read." I've read a lot of protest books, a lot of warnings, but most authors give you a way out: "Look out, but here's what you should maybe try to do." With Bigger Thomas, Wright says, "Well, here's what you got." And...holy shit, man.

He's such a powerful force that Wright spends the entire last third of his own book basically saying "Holy shit!" Which is why this only gets four stars from me; that "Holy shit" is much weaker than the first two thirds, and I can't recommend this book to you without the caveat that the last 150 pages is pretty tough going.

So listen, I'm not gonna tell you to skip the last third because I'm not really important enough to say something like that, but in case you do, here's what happens: Bigger is not going to win that court case. There.

A man who feels the world against him gets a lucky break and proceeds to throw it all away. An interesting look at the racial differences from inner city to the upper class. The lawyers statements still hold true today in how some people feel about the racial divide and what separates the races. Richard Wright's writing is as true today as when this book was written, 1940.

Wow. Mr. Wright wrote a bold, emotional, brave and fierce book here. Its painful; it's thought provoking; it hits the reader like a full force punch to the gut (all great books should do this by the way).

The edition I read was the uncut (unaltered) version before the publisher, with outside prompting, requested some revisions. These revisions included tone, violent depictions and graphic sex. I was not bothered, nor offended, by anything in the original, and I couldn't imagine experiencing it any other way.

No review I could ever make could do Mr. Wright or this book justice. My only attempt to do justice to Wright would be to issue a plea to others to read this book! I thank my lucky stars that I promoted it on my to-read list - On occasion, great books are lost and forgotten there. Thankfully, Bigger's story wasn't lost and forgotten for me, and it will stay with me for a long time.

I could never relate to Bigger's story, but even so, it's not impossible to understand more and feel more because of it. Mr. Wright is a great writer and he really shows it here.

My favorite part was the last part - "Fate". I thought Bigger's lawyer Max did a hell of a job. I didn't mind the lawyer's long winded speech (plea for mercy). I ate it up; I adored it. It thrilled and floored me completely. Max's plea for life was a building up to the climax for me; the height of the drama; and perhaps, Mr. Wright's message for the reader. Max gave a heroic effort, but the reader will know how it ends well before Max finishes.

Highly Recommended.

Powerful, tense, and moving, this story of a young black man in 1950's Chicago stumbling from a life of petty crimes into one of a wanted and then convicted murderer via a series of tragically bad decisions is unbelievably stark and bleak and, above all, heart-breakingly relevant still. This is one of those books that should be required reading for everyone. Everyone.

This book made me think and gave me insight into a different perspective, that of African Americans in 1940, a part of which has undoubtedly carried forward to today. It's intelligent, eloquent, and ahead of its time. Wright does a very smart thing in this book: he does not create a main character who is lovable and then victimized, he creates Bigger Thomas, a main character who is a monster, provides an understanding for how Bigger and many others like him come to be, and then does not apologize or justify the awful acts he commits.As a philosopher once said, do we complain when a pear tree produces pears? It's not a justification, but Wright says let's understand where violence comes from and accept it as an inevitable consequence of our society's actions. Along the line he portrays subtle and outright racism and anti-communism; it's frightening to realize just how real this was 70 years ago.It seems Wright took a lot of criticism for his style and for making the final part of the book drag on; I say it's really unfortunate that among those who did so was James Baldwin and jeez, cut the guy some slack. There are many others guilty of that kind of thing, Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn, Dostoevsky, and Ayn Rand, hoo boy and Ayn Rand; moreover, it seems to me that it wasn't so much that it was overly verbose, it was that the first couple of parts were so gripping, and the latter part was a bit more predictable, and the logical aftermath of the first parts.Quotes:"As long as he could remember, he had never been responsible to anyone. The moment a situation became so that it exacted something of him, he rebelled. That was the way he lived; he passed his days trying to defeat or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared."On whites who sympathized but were "too nice"; along with later commentary that the rich who donate to 'boys clubs' were doing so out of a sense of guilt, and also were the first to deny renting houses to blacks in white neighborhoods, and to hire blacks in better jobs in their companies, either of which would have had more real benefit:"He felt naked, transparent; he felt that this white man, having helped to put him down, having helped to deform him, held him up now to look at him and be amused. At that moment he felt toward Mary and Jan a dumb, cold, and inarticulate hate.""Many a time he had stood on street corners with them and talked of white people as long sleek cars zoomed past. To Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead, or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one's feet in the dark. As long as he and his black folks did not go beyond certain limits, there was no need to fear that white force. But whether they feared it or not, each and every day of their lives they lived with it; even when words did not sound its name, they acknowledged its reality. As long as they lived here in this prescribed corner of the city, they paid mute tribute to it."Quite a bit of edge ot this one:"Every time he felt as he had felt that night, he raped. But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against a wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape. But it was rape when he cried out in hate deep in his heart as he felt the strain of living day to day. That, too, was rape.""...he had felt the need of the clean satisfaction of facing this thing in all its fulness, of fighting it out in the wind and sunlight, in front of those whose hate for him was so unfathomably deep that, after they had shunted him off into a corner of the city to rot and die, they could turn to him, as Mary had that night in the car, and say, 'I'd like to know how your people live.'But what was he after? What did he want? What did he love and what did he hate? He did not know........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. Sometimes, in his room or on the sidewalk, the world seemed to him a strange labyrinth even when the streets were straight and the walls were square......He did not want to sit on a bench and sing, or lie in a corner and sleep. It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies, or walked along the streets with crowds, that he felt what he wanted: to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed to live like others, even though he was black."On the historical backdrop:"Each of them - the mob and the mob-masters; the wire-pullers and the frightened; the leaders and their pet vassals - know and feel that their lives are built upon a historical deed of wrong against many people, people from whose lives they have bled their leisure and their luxury! Their feeling of guilt is as deep as that of the boy who sits here on trial today. Fear and hate and guilt are the keynotes of this drama!....And we must deal here with the hot blasts of hate engendered in others by that first wrong, and then the monstrous and horrible crimes flowing from that hate, a hate which has seeped down into the hearts and modled the deepest and most delicate sensibilities of multitudes.""They were colonists and they were faced with a difficult choice: they had either to subdue this wild land or be subdued by it. We need but turn our eyes upon the imposing sweep of streets and factories and buidlings to see how completely they have conquered. But in conquering they used others, used their lives. Like a miner using a pick or a carpenter using a saw, they bent the will of others to their own. Lives to them were tools and weapons to be wielded against a hostile land and climate."

Amazed that I am just now reading this classic for the first time. Saddened how really not much has changed.

I'm pretty sure most readers would agree that the first part of the book is what has kept its reputation intact over the years since it was written. The depiction of Bigger Thomas's personality, thoughts, emotions and crimes is vivid and shocking, even while understandable, at least to a degree. The first half of the book is astonishingly relevant today, as we continue to struggle with racial understanding and conflict, all these years later.However, the book's vitality comes to something of a halt once Bigger is captured. At that point, a didactic plea for a Communistic view of society takes place through the mouth of the Jewish Communist lawyer, who takes on Bigger's case to prove a point.The ending feels true again as Bigger returns to his visceral experience of what it is to be young and black in racist Chicago and asserts his right to exist as exactly what he is - and, the author would have us believe, as society has created him. Well worth reading today, despite the preachiness of the second half.

This book is so important.It shows a pretty ugly side of race relations in America, but it is absolutely eye-opening. This story brings tragedy to a new scale. It hit a cord with me and has stuck with me for years; I have never been able to forget Bigger Thomas and his story.