Ironically, however, at the end of Native Son
Bigger seems to experience an existential epiphany,
as his final declaration to his attorney suggests:
Sounds funny, Mr. Max, but when I think about
what you say I kind of feel what I wanted. It
makes me feel I was kind of right.... Maybe
it ain’t fair to kill, and I reckon I really didn’t
want to kill. But when I think of why all the
killings was, I begin to feel what I wanted, what
I am.... I didn’t want to kill!... But what I
killed for, I am! (358)To exist in a world bent on suffocating him, Big-
ger concludes, he had to kill—to re-create him-
self—not merely to think, as the Cartesian cogito
suggests.
Native Son was universally reviewed, receiving
both praise and condemnation. In his Atlantic
Monthly review, David Cohn declared, “Richard
Wright, a Mississippi-born Negro, has written a
blinding and corrosive study in hate.... The race
hatred of his hero, Bigger Thomas, is directed
with equal malevolence and demoniac intensity
toward all whites” (77). Writing for the New York
Times, Charles Poore noted, “It is a long time
since we’ve read a new novelist who had such
command of the technique and resources of the
novel. Mr. Wright’s method is generally Dreise-
rian; but he has written his American tragedy in
a notably firm prose” (42). Clifton Fadiman, in
The New Yorker, called Native Son “the most pow-
erful American novel to appear since The Grapes
of Wrath” (45). Ralph Ellison, writing for New
Masses, declared Native Son to be “the first philo-
sophical novel by an American Negro. This work
possesses an artistry, penetration of thought,
and sheer emotional power that places it into the
front rank of American fiction” (12).
As a Book-of-the-Month Club selection for
March 1940, the novel became a best seller over-
night, earning popularity accorded to no previous
African-American work. Irving Howe declared in
1963,
The day Native Son appeared, American cul-
ture was changed forever. No matter howmuch qualifying the book might later need, it
made impossible a repetition of the old lies. In
all its crudeness, melodrama and claustropho-
bia of vision, Richard Wright’s novel brought
out into the open, as no one ever had before,
the hatred, fear and violence that have crippled
and may yet destroy our culture. (137)To d a y, Native Son remains among the most impor-
tant cultural and literary documents in America.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abcarian, Richard, ed. Richard Wright’s Native Son:
A Critical Handbook. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth,
1970.
Cohn, David. “Atlantic Monthly Review of Native
Son.” In Richard Wright’s Native Son: A Critical
Handbook, edited by Richard Abcarian, 77–80.
Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970.
Ellison, Ralph. “Review of Native Son.” In Richard
Wright, edited by Henry Louis Gates and K. A. Ap-
piah, 11–19. New York: Amistad Publishers, 1993.
Fadiman, Clifton. “New Yorker Review of Native Son.”
In Richard Wright’s Native Son: A Critical Hand-
book, edited by Richard Abcarian, 45–47. Belmont,
Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970.
Howe, Irving. “Black Boys and Native Sons.” In Rich-
ard Wright’s Native Son: A Critical Handbook,
edited by Richard Abcarian, 135–143. Belmont,
Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970.
Poore, Charles. “New York Times Review of Native
Son.” In Richard Wright’s Native Son: A Critical
Handbook, edited by Richard Abcarian, 41–43.
Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1970.
Rampersad, Arnold. Introduction. In Native Son,
New York: Harper Perennial, 1987.
Wright, Richard. “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born.” In Native
Son, 505–540. New York: Harper Perennial, 1987.
———. Native Son. New York: Harper and Brothers,
1940.
Yoshinobu HakutaniNaylor, Gloria (1950– )
A novelist, essayist, screenplay writer, columnist,
and educator, Gloria Naylor was born in New York386 Naylor, Gloria