NATIVE SON

Michigan

Richard Right's book, written in 1940, is the story of 20 year old Bigger Thomas, who lives in utter poverty--actual, moral. A protagonist with no redeeming characteristics, Bigger is a study in terrifying criminality, brutal and concienceless. He is full of a rage that seals over boiling emotions. For he is a black man of his time and place, with everything that segregation entails. He commits a horrific murder (fully illustrating the idea that no good goes unpunished) but finds it freeing for reasons the reader is compelled and horrified to understand. By killing a young rich white girl, an accidental act that ensues from his own sense of his place in the white world, he is surprised to discover he feels liberated. There can only be one end for Bigger and the mesmerized reader knows it from the first page. How did Right pull off this staggering and controversial achievement that created an uproar on publication and continues to today to stand as a landmark book?

Veronica