James Baquet

    Now we come to No. 20 of “The 100 Greatest Novels of the 20th Century.” “Native Son” by Richard Wright addresses the same themes as Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man.”

    But the themes of systemic racial discrimination, alienation in one’s own country, and the struggle to achieve a sense of personal worth are approached more directly by Wright, with little of the nuance that Ellison strove to achieve by using the “invisibility” metaphor. In short, Wright was a scrapper. His father left when Wright was only 6, and his mother was incapacitated by a stroke six years later. By that time, aged 12, Wright had never had a complete year of schooling. Now settled with his maternal grandparents in Jackson, Mississippi, he enrolled in school, and became class valedictorian of his junior high.

    The school opposed the speech he had written for the occasion, and put considerable pressure on him to instead deliver one written by the school’s principal. But young Wright refused, and though he eventually spoke his own words, the incident left him with a deep sense of the injustice of the system.

    Circumstances forced him to leave high school after a few weeks, and he moved north, to Chicago, to support his mother and brother. It was there he gained the experiences that contributed to his novel, “Native Son.”

    It’s the story of Bigger Thomas, growing up in Chicago in brutal poverty, and told in three books titled “Fear,” “Flight,” and “Fate.”

    In Book One, Thomas accidentally kills his white boss’s daughter, and covers up the crime — or so he thinks. In Book Two, evidence of the crime is uncovered, and he flees, in the process killing his own girlfriend on purpose, and ultimately being caught by police. In Book Three, in prison, Thomas has the opportunity to reflect on these events, and comes to a better understanding of himself and his position vis-à-vis white society.

    Thomas is a complex character. At first a murderer by accident, he becomes a willful one. Yet, one cannot help but feel the frustration he senses at being trapped. It’s a fascinating look into the mind of an “outsider.”

    Vocabulary

    Which word above means:

    1. one ready and able to fight

    2. embedded in a system

    3. harsh, violent

    4. a sense of not belonging

    5. in relation to

    6. subtle distinction

    7. unable to do anything

    8. top student in a class

    9. not simple, difficult to understand

    10. a large amount (of)