Native Son Essay: The Tragedy -- Native Son Essays

Native Son The Tragedy Richard Wrights Native Son a very moving unfermented. Perhaps this is mostly due to Wrights skillful merging of his narrative voice with Biggers which allows the reader to feel he is also inside Biggers skin. There is no question that Bigger is a tragic figure, even an archetypical one, as he represents the African American experience of onerousness in America. Wright states in the introduction, however, that there are Biggers among every crush community throughout the world, arguing that many of the rapidly changing and uncertain conditions of the modern world, a modern world largely founded on imperialism and exploitation, have created people like Bigger, restless and adrift, searching for a place for themselves in a world that, for them, has lost many of its cultural and spiritual centers. Because Wright chose to deal with the experience he knew best, Native Son is an exploration of how the pressure and racism of the American cultural environment af fects black people, their feelings, thoughts, self-images, in fact, their entire lives, for one learns from Native Son that oppression permeates every aspect of life for both the oppressed and oppressor, though for one it is more overt than the other. Though this paper deals with Biggers character and how the last scene of the novel reflects an evolution and realization in his character in terms of artistryhur Millers definition of tragedy, the issue of mass oppression of one people by another embodies the dimensions of a larger tragedy that is painfully embedded within human history. Many of Native Sons earlier scenes serve Wrights purposes in showing how Americas white rascism affects Biggers behavior, his thinking and... ...rd Wrights Art of Tragedy. Iowa City U of Iowa Press, 1986. Kinnamon, Keneth and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright. Jackson University Press of Mississippi, 1993. Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright A Study Literature and Society. Urbana U of Illinois P, 1973. Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. New Essays on Native Son. New York Cambridge UP, 1990. Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds. Richard Wright A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1984. Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale Southern Illinois UP, 1969. Miller, Eugene E. Voice of a Native Son The Poetics of Richard Wright. Jackson University Press of Mississippi, 1990. Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hall, 1995.