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The Conclusion of Richard Wright's Native Son

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Paul N. Siegel
Paul N. Siegel*
Affiliation:
Long Island University, Brooklyn, New York
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Abstract

Both Max's courtroom speech in Richard Wright's Native Son and his final scene with Bigger have been grievously misunderstood. The numerous critics of the novel have regarded Max's speech as a Communist “party-line oration” whose propaganda is poorly related to the rest of the book. Rather, Max seeks desperately to avert the cataclysmic end toward which he sees American society heading by striving to have wrongs redressed. Bigger, however, finds a meaning in his life by accepting his feelings of hate. This is not a defeat for him, as critics have asserted. Hatred of the oppressor is a natural, human emotion which, used as the motor power of an idea driving toward a goal, can transform both the individual and society. As Max says, “The job in getting people to fight and have faith is in making them believe in what life has made them feel. . . .” This is the belief Bigger finally acquires. With this belief comes a sense of comradeship with those whites such as Jan who have earned such comradeship in action.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 3 , May 1974 , pp. 517 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 522 “Black Boys and Native Sons,” A World More Attractive (New York: Horizon, 1963), p. 104.

Note 2 in page 522 So, too, Dan McCall sums up “the usual objection voiced against the third part of Wright's novel”: “The Party had interrupted Wright's project and falsified the message of ‘the bad nigger’ ” (The Example of Richard Wright, New York: Harcourt, 1969, p. 90). McCall, who has written the best criticism on Native Son, himself speaks of Max (pp. 90, 101) as “the ideological spokesman” who “can only filter Bigger through the Party's vision.” Robert A. Bone, who likewise has written well on Native Son, says similarly: “In Book m Wright has allowed his statement as a Communist to overwhelm his statement as an artist. . . . Bigger's lawyer … is at once a mouthpiece for the author and a spokesman for the party line” (Richard Wright, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1969, p. 23). For similar views, see Edward Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 114–15, and Russell Carl Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Man and His Works (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), p. 81.

Note 3 in page 522 On Native Grounds (New York : Harcourt, 1942), p. 387.

Note 4 in page 522 Sunday Worker, New York, 14 April 1940, Sec. 2, p. 4, col. 6.

Note 5 in page 522 Max's statement that Bigger's existence is “a crime against the state” (Richard Wright, Native Son, New York: Harper, 1940, p. 367) is, insofar as it is an indictment at all, far more of an indictment of the state than it is of Bigger. Max does deal with the murder of Bessie (pp. 336–37), making the point that Bigger knew that the white world would be concerned with the murder only of Mary, not of Bessie. He nowhere argues that Bigger, let alone “the whole Negro mass,” should be held in jail to protect white daughters.

Note 6 in page 523 James G. Kennedy, in an article (“The Content and Form of Native Son,” College English, 34, 1972, 269–86) published after I submitted this article to PMLA, assumed that Max is to be taken as a Communist party member but asserted (282) that Max reveals himself to be really “an idealist and no Marxist” because “he supposes there can be understanding above classes.”

Note 7 in page 523 Edwin Berry Burgum, The Novel and the World's Dilemma (1947; rpt. New York: Russell, 1963), p. 238; James Baldwin, “Many Thousands Gone,” Notes of a Native Son (New York: Dial Press, 1963), p. 42; McCall, p. 93; Margolies, p. 112.

Note 8 in page 523 P. 325. See also pp. 304 and 317. Clarence Darrow similarly pleaded guilty and rejected a trial by jury in the Loeb-Leopold case, to which the novel refers.

Note 9 in page 523 Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1966), p. 151.

Note 10 in page 523 P. 19. See also pp. 24, 91, 203, 226, 240.

Note 11 in page 523 P. 337. The theme of blindness was mentioned in Bone, The Negro Novel, p. 147, James A. Emanuel, “Fever and

Feeling: Notes on the Imagery in Native Son,“ Negro Digest, 18 Dec. 1968, 20–21, and Brignano, p. 117; the theme of the white world as a great natural force in Bone, p. 147 and Brignano, p. 117; the image of the wall or curtain behind which Bigger withdraws in Emanuel, pp. 22–24; the theme of Bigger's killing as a means of liberation in Bone, p. 146, McCall, pp. 87, 100, Margolies, pp. 116–17, Brignano, p. 147. None of these takes note, however, of how these themes and images are gathered up in Max's speech.

Note 12 in page 523 P. 358. This was what Jan had told Bigger when he visited him in prison: “You believed enough to kill. You thought you were settling something, or you wouldn't have killed” (p. 246). Apparently, “all the killing” refers to all the times Bigger felt like killing.

Note 13 in page 523 Introd. to Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Grove, 1966), pp. 16–18. With Sartre's point that the suppressed fury of the natives causes them to turn against each other, compare Bigger's violence in Doc's poolroom, when his fear of the hated white man forces him to attack Gus rather than to rob Blum's delicatessen.