Native Son

Rating:
Summary: In the top 5 BEST Books I Have Ever Read
Review: It`s my personal opinion that Richard Wright`s Native Son is one of the best books ever written by an African-American writer. In his book he desribes the pains of ghetto life for the negroes in Chicago`s black belt, cira 1920. Never has an author ever caught the thoughts and feelings of a single person as Wright did with the main character Bigger. Bigger`s life is portrayed as bleak and dark but, things start to look up when he accepts a job as a driver for the millionaire Dalton`s. He is getting paid well with extra spending money and the opportunity to get an education. His first job is to take the Dalton`s daughter to a university function but, there is a change of plans, a change that turns out to be fatal. I don`t want to give the whole book away so I highly suggest read and find out what happens to Bigger. So if you enjoy reading classic American books you will enjoy Richard Wright`s Native Son.

Rating:
Summary: Native Son
Review: The Native Son has to be Richard Wrights best novel ever. In this narrative he portray's a vivid side of a medial black child in an idealistic society. The book is very engaging and is a great book for those who have a foreshadowing immagination.

Rating:
Summary: An Explanation of Rage
Review: The main character of Wright's novel, Bigger Thomas, is a sociopath. Filled with hatred and confusion, both at his own blackness and world around him, Bigger has no attachment to society.He lives in an isolated and invisible world of despair, from which he strikes out. Wright uses Bigger to vividly illustrate the products of segregation, racism and limited opportunity. Bigger is a natural result of his racist classist society. If you read this book you may gain some insight into the reason why we have so many violent youth in our cities that seem to lack the fundamentals of morality and humanity. We can see from the news that Bigger is still with us. What does this tell us about the society in which we live?

Rating:
Summary: Disturbing and Enlightening
Review: Richard Wright takes us to a terrible place: not just the slums of 1930s Chicago, but to the mind of a young black man, Bigger Thomas, who is about to ruin not just his own life, but the lives of everyone around him.

We cannot sympathize with Bigger. Bad as his environment is, we see that he has friends and relations who have not been so corrupted by it. And yet even in the face of that, we cannot help but be appalled at the injustice with which he's treated.

We see here the beginnings of the Black Civil Rights movement and hear for the first time many of the ideas that are common sense today. We also see the communist party trying to reach out to the black people, and realize (in hindsight) how lucky we are that so little ever came of that.

Must reading for anyone who thinks there's been no real progress in race relations, "Native Son" also makes a good introduction for anyone who doesn't understand what the fuss was all about.

Rating:
Summary: Take Some Responsibility
Review: I had to read Native Son the summer before my junior year for my English class in high school. I am suprised that it has gotten so many great reviews and is considered a classic. It was highly offensive the way everyone was stereotyped. All the white people were shown as monsters to the black characters, but Bigger Thomas was the most offensive character I have ever encountered in a work of literatue thus far. When he killed the white girl, whose family he had been working for, he showed no remorse or responsiblity. If it had trully been an accident he would have gone to the police. Instead he framed another man and then disappears himself. Then there is the graphic description of how he raped and killed his own girlfriend, which made my stomache churn. He showed no remorse throughout the entire story, but instead felt it is society's fault that he has commited such horrible crimes. I do not believe that this book shows the plight of African Americans in our society, but instead shows a man who refuses to take any responsibility for his actions.

Rating:
Summary: Native Son
Review: This was a great book, with the situtations hitting hard on the truth. Other reviewers will tell you that he may have racial issues problem, but if telling the truth is having is having ricial issues then I believe many of us do. The emotion that is portrayed in this novel is high and intense and you will probably go with emotional changes in the book as well. It is strong in its point that racial issues will never be solved because the people created it and enforced it are afraid. Afraid that some day the people they used to rule will rule them, so the segregation and discrimination will continue until we learn to live together. I doubt so happening because of the controlling spirit of the white man and the vengance of the black man. Time and time again the white man has proven the "illiteracy" of the black man, but many times more the black man has proven the "cowardessness" of the white man. Whether thats a word or not, a great preacher/teacher from Vorhees College once asked: "Why keep a man from doing something he can't do?" I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to read the truth no matter how harsh it is.

Rating:
Summary: Native Son
Review: I give this book three stars. I think that Richard Wright wrote it very well and I'm not a big reader but this is just a book full of suspence, I never felt the need to stop reading! My 10th grade English teacher gave this book to us as an assignment and I really enjoyed it. However the book was filled with racism and the murders in the novel were very discusting, full detail! But I would deffinatley recommend this story to anybody who likes to read a good book!

Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: In Bigger Thomas, Richard Wright has created the classic tragic figure - a character swept along by forces beyond his control who contributes to his own inevitable demise through his self destructive behavior.

Wright's remarkable and complex novel works on many levels. At the broadest level it is a novel about free-will vs. determinism - why do we do the things that we do? On a societal level it is the story of racism in America and the interaction between blacks and whites in the 1930's. On an individual level it is the story of Bigger, Bessie, Max, and the rest of the characters that Wright develops.

This novel has been criticized and praised alike. In Bigger Wright has created a complex character. He is not a mindless robot, as some critics of Wright claim, but a well drawn character who in some part of his being has dreams and aspirations, but is firmly defeated by the situations in which he finds himself. Perhaps the most memorable part of the book comes in the opening, as Bigger watches an airplane flying overhead and realizes that flying is an option which has been closed to him.

Bigger is a human being, and a glimpse through the headlines even today in the year 2000 (perhaps *particularly* today) reveals our fallibility as humans. Children born in ghettos are not genetically predestined to end up criminals, but a disproportionate number of them do end up that way. Wright tells us the story of one of these individuals.

Those who have characterized the novel as a racist or one-dimensional portrait of Black Americans have missed the point. Bigger is not a proxy for all Blacks living in America. Bigger is one individual, and is presented as such. The assumption that any literary work which includes a negative portrayal of a Black person is racist is, in itself, in a way racist. African Americans, like all human beings, are individuals, and it is a simplistic assumption to project the portrayal of one individual upon the whole group. We look around us and see that there are indeed individuals, who like Bigger, are not strong enough to bear the weight which society forces them to bear. The question which Wright poses is to what extent is society responsible to the ills provoked by the evil of racism, and to what extent are we as men and women responsible for our own actions. An excellent novel; should be required reading.

Rating:
Summary: Addictive
Review: Reading this book can put you in a trance of sort and allows you to view the world as Bigger does. Richard Wright's introductory essay "How Bigger Was Born" is an excellent essay, and prompted me to read the book. I did see where Wright was unsuccessful in some places, particularly towards the end of the novel, when the two attorneys are speaking. We lose the sense of Bigger's perspective, and get Wright's and others' perspectives, which Wright says he did not want to do. The strongest parts of the book are in the beginning and through his escape and plotting. Reading this book, say on the train for a half hour, you get off and look around you with a nasty scowl. It's impossible not to. You can truly understand the character, and how he would react to most situations. Wright goes ahead and gives him the most trying circumstances around. Bigger is a compelling character, and this is a great story. Bigger's hopes and dreams, his nasty worldiness, and his frightening distorted realization of his purpose and his self at the end are slowly growing entities of their own, which leave an undelible mark on the reader forever. I don't expect to ever forget much of this book. One of the things I liked in the essay was how Wright said, after the response to his short stories, that he would never write something that would be so easy as to bring tears. Your approach to this is much more difficult. It's not a tear-jerker. An excellent read, the book is written in plain good prose, too. Bigger is a truly unique character in literature of any sort.

Rating:
Summary: A Haunting Piece of Work
Review: I have read this book over 20 years ago after having discovered him in High School English class. (Thanks Ms. Sims), and reading Black Boy. I then graduated to his other works. I feel the reason Mr. Wright wrote this book(and his others as well, his work is so haunting) is to show America what seperatism caused African Americans. Personally, I don't feel that Bigger intentionally killed her, he really didn't know how to act with whites. He was conditioned to fear and respect them. But a side of him questioned this, and he didn't like it. It is sad when a group of people have to suffer indignities just because they are somehow different from the rest. First it was the Native Americans, then, the African Americans, then the Irish, Italians, the Jewish, and now, the gays. I don't see how one cannot see how history repeats itself here. Mr.Wright's books were all very haunting and pessimistic, and that is because he lived it, and he didn't like it. When it became unbearable, he left the United States for France where he lived until his death. I for one, considered him one of my favorite writers and I have to agree with another reviewer and say that every American should read his work. You will never forget it.