Native Son
In the novel Native Son, Richard Wright portrays the main character, Bigger Thomas, as a product of the society in which he was brought up in. ... Throughout Native Son, Wright makes it very clear to the reader that there was an incredible difference between the lives of whites and blacks in America in the 1930s. ... Although these very apparent and overt differences between Bigger and his white oppressors are seen throughout Native Son, they are not what truly undermine Wrights use of Bigger and his effectiveness in describing the life of a black man in America in the 1930s. ... James Baldwin argues in Everybodys Protest Novel, that Native Son and other books like it are, "Undertaken out of sympathy for the Negro, but through its need to present him merely as a social victim or a mythic agent of sexual prowess, it hastens to confine the Negro to the very tones of violence he has known all his life. ... Bigger, who is Wright’s “hero” in Native Son, is not a hero who is to be admired or emulated. ... The point that Wright tries to make in Native Son is that Bigger is a monster that is created by the society in which he lives. ... The character of Bigger Thomas in Native Son is a character that embodies every negative African-American racial stereotype imaginable. ... Although Native Son was eye-opening and exciting to read, I do not feel that Wright helped eliminate any racial tension that may have been common when he wrote the novel.