Native Son 1183formative years are experienced in flits of both won-
der and fear. They also hint at Wright’s fondness of
haiku, a Japanese form of three-line poetry, which he
wrote extensively in the last years of his life. Wright’s
childhood is filled with powerful images and recol-
lections, each signifying the fraught nature of an
upbringing in which he is constantly at odds with
the authority figures around him. Two particularly
arresting passages capture this period of Wright’s
life. One winter morning, warned against making
noise because his grandmother is ill in the next
room, the four-year-old Wright solves his boredom
by experimenting with fire, holding burning pieces
of straw up to the curtains to set the family home
ablaze. In another passage, he takes his tempestuous
father’s instruction to kill a noisy cat in the yard lit-
erally instead of metaphorically, much to the horror
of his deeply religious mother.
Wright next depicts his growth into early teens.
In this highly eventful period, he takes his first job
doing chores in the local neighborhood, begins to
read fiction (which becomes his “gateway to the
world”), endures numerous fights with school bul-
lies, and harbors adolescent sexual feelings (some-
what humorously) toward the wife of the church
elder. More significantly, he begins to develop
genuine awareness of racial prejudice by working in
the homes of white people. He also develops a sense
of responsibility for his mother after she suffers a
debilitating stroke, which forces the family back into
his grandmother’s home. There, he endures a long-
running and often violent conflict with the cruelly
imperious Aunt Addie. In one particularly interest-
ing passage, when he is enrolled at the religious
school where Addie teaches, his aunt wrongly beats
him for dropping walnut shells on the floor. Sensing
the injustice of his public beating, Wright resolves
never to allow Aunt Addie to beat him again, grap-
pling with her in a violent encounter back at home
in which he draws a retaliatory kitchen knife.
In his late teens, Wright develops plans for the
future, particularly in terms of migrating north and
taking responsibility for his mother by gaining a job.
His many jobs bring him into contact with white
people in a way he has not previously experienced.
Despite his concerted efforts at subservience, he
finds great difficulty in maintaining an uncritical
posture of the status quo of the races, which imperils
his life. For a short period, Wright turns to crime in
order to subsidize his migration to Memphis, first by
bootlegging liquor to white prostitutes in the hotel
where he works as a bellboy; then by stealing fruit
preserves from the local college to sell on to restau-
rants; and finally, under great duress and anxiety, by
stealing theater tickets for resale. All of this inspires
his growing sense of fear, a theme explored in much
greater detail in his classic novel Native Son.
This stage also coincides with Wright’s growing
ambitions as a writer, especially with the publica-
tion of his first story in the local black newspaper,
the Southern Register. In November 1925, age 18,
Wright finally arrives in Memphis, where he meets
the cheerful and warmhearted Mrs. Moss and her
daughter, Bessie. The pair’s overwhelming affection
is complete anathema to a young Wright condi-
tioned to the dispassionate ways of his own family.
While holding a new job at an optical company, eat-
ing minimally in order to save money, he begins to
read many famous American authors, including H.
L. Mencken and Theodore Dreiser. It is this experi-
ence that inspires Wright to use words to address
the conflicts of his own life and, by extension, those
of America, a course of action to which he dedicates
the rest of his life.
Kaleem AshrafwriGHT, riCHarD Native Son
(1940)
Richard Wright’s Native Son, a best-selling novel
published in 1940, ranks among the foremost con-
tributions to African-American literature. It sold
half a million copies within its first six months. The
book blends a range of genres, including social real-
ism, thriller, gothic horror, and courtroom drama.
The central character of Native Son is Bigger
Thomas, a 20-year-old black man who lives with
his family in a tiny, rat-infested apartment on the
south side of Chicago. Fighting the high cost of
rent, his mother wishes he would take a job and stop
hanging around on the streets with his gang. Bigger
finds employment with the Daltons, a rich white
family who have shown an apparent compassion
for the African-American community with large