| The autobiographical account of Richard Wright's life | | | | where they pick her boyfriend, Jan Erlone and go out |
| ends in "American Hunger" the sequel novel to "Black | | | | for a treat. Having taken too much drink, Mary gets |
| Boy" when Richard finally realizes the incredible power | | | | stone drunk so much so that Bigger had to carry her |
| that his words will eventually have. He decides that he | | | | bodily into her room. He was on the process of laying |
| will use his words as weapons, appealing to the | | | | her properly down on the bed when he heard the |
| humanistic and emotional qualities in man and society. | | | | approaching footsteps of her blind mother. He got |
| As a young man living in Memphis, Tennessee, Wright | | | | frightened of the dire consequences he might face for |
| began an intense reading period in which he became | | | | being with Mary in the room. So he covered her up |
| familiar with a wide range of authors, many of them | | | | with clothes and shielded her mouth with a pillow in the |
| contemporary American authors. Of that period in his | | | | process, smothering her to death. In a further display of |
| life he wrote: Reading was like a drug, a dope. The | | | | panic he burns the body, decapitates and cremates it |
| novels created moods in which I lived for days | | | | in the basement chimney where he hopes discovery |
| Despite the violent and depressing images presented in | | | | will be impossible. He furthermore deflects suspicion |
| "Black Boy", Wright himself seems to have shed his | | | | from himself by attempting to implicate Jan, since his |
| cynicism, ending with a note of hope. The song he | | | | being a communist he could readily be accepted as |
| quotes "Arise, you wretched of the earths a better | | | | the bad guy capable of doing such evil and heartless |
| world's in birth" expresses his new profound belief that | | | | acts. He feels so invigorated by what he has done |
| eventually, society will rise above its ills and prejudices. | | | | that he tries to extort money from the wealthy |
| Wright even shows his optimism by shedding the | | | | Daltons. When that fails and Mary's bones are |
| images of childhood and of the brutal South: "The days | | | | discovered, he murders his own black girlfriend, Bessie, |
| of my youth, were receding from me like a rolling tide, | | | | in a further but vain attempt to cover uip his tracks. He |
| leaving me alone upon high, dry ground, leaving me with | | | | is soon captured and confined in prison awaiting trial. It |
| a quieter and deeper consciousness." | | | | was there that Bigger feels for the first time a sense |
| Wright's ranking first in the postal service examination | | | | of freedom: "Seems sort of natural-like, me being here |
| in Chicago in 1937 brought him an offer of permanent | | | | facing that death chair. Now I come to think of it, it |
| position at 2,000 dollars a year. But he turns the offer | | | | seems like something like this just had to be. He is then |
| down to move to New York city to pursue a career | | | | condemned to death and faces his destiny |
| as a writer. He attends the Second American Writer's | | | | unrepentantly. affirming that 'what I killed for, I am!' Yet |
| Congress as a delegate even serving as a session | | | | in prison, he comes to terms with the need for a |
| president. It was here that he stressed that writers | | | | common brotherhood. |
| should think of themselves as writers first and not as | | | | The day this novel considered Wright's most |
| laborers.He becomes the Harlem editor of the | | | | monumental fictional achievement appeared, Irving |
| Communist newspaper Daily Worker for which he | | | | Howe declared "American culture was changed |
| writes 200 articles during the year. He also helps | | | | forever. It became an instant bestseller selling out within |
| launch the magazine New Challenge designed to | | | | hours in some bookstores and selling 215,000 copies in |
| present black life "in relationship to the struggle against | | | | its first three weeks of publication. It also established |
| war and Fascism." | | | | Wright as a major twentieth century writer. |
| He now tries to sharpen his conception of literary form | | | | Native Son made Wright the most respected and |
| and seeks to work out the relationship between the | | | | wealthiest black writer in America. It was the first |
| techniques of fiction and the tenets of Marxism. To | | | | bestselling novel by a black American writer and the |
| achieve this, he publishes his influential essay, "Blueprint | | | | first Book-of-the-Month Club selection by an |
| for Negro Writing " in the November issue of New | | | | African-American writer.He was awarded the National |
| Challenge as his own attempt to outlining a literary | | | | Association for the Advancement of Colored People's |
| theory for black American writers. Blueprint was like a | | | | prestigious Spingarn Medal in 1941. |
| manifesto and declaration of independence from what | | | | The novel also marked a high point in the history of the |
| he judged to be bourgeois literary forms and agendas | | | | Negro novel not only because it is a work of art in its |
| long dominant in black letters. Distancing himself from | | | | own right but because it influenced a whole generation |
| the writings of the Harlem Renaissance, Wright urges | | | | of Negro novelists. Its mix of urban realism, sociological |
| black writers to embrace a Marxist conception of | | | | theory and naturalistic determination helped to define |
| reality and society which offers in his judgment the | | | | and influence almost the entire sweep of |
| "maximum degree of freedom in thought and feeling | | | | African-American fiction of the post-World-War 11 era. |
| ...for the Negro writer" that would even transcend | | | | The lead character, Bigger Thomas, served to |
| nationalism. | | | | represent the limitations that society placed on African |
| Wright executed his own blueprint in his short story | | | | Americans, and illustrated that Thomas could only gain |
| collection, Uncle Tom's Children a collection of four | | | | his own agency and self-knowledge by committing |
| stories set in the Jim Crow South with which he | | | | heinous acts. Wright was criticized for both works' |
| launched his literary career. The stories though often | | | | concentration on violence, and, in the case of Native |
| flawed by Marxist propagandizing, melodrama, | | | | Son, for portraying a black person in ways which might |
| ponderous didactism and improbable plots show some | | | | seem to confirm whites' worst fears. For many white |
| of the major influences on his fiction which includes: | | | | Americans saw Bigger Thomas as a symbol of the |
| naturalism, Marxism, freudianism and the black folk | | | | entire black race. |
| tradition with which he had a love-hate relationship | | | | Wright is also renowned for the autobiographical Black |
| lasting throughout his career. Wright gained national | | | | Boy (1945), which describes his early life from Roxie |
| attention for this collection which fictionalized the | | | | through his move to Chicago, his clashes with his |
| incidents of lynching in the Deep South. One of the | | | | Seventh-day Adventist family, his troubles with white |
| stories there "Fire and Cloud" won the O'Henry | | | | employers and social isolation. American Hunger, |
| Memorial award in 1938. The whole collection won first | | | | (published posthumously in 1977) was originally intended |
| prize for the Story magazine contest open to Federal | | | | as the second book of Black Boy and is restored to |
| Writer's Project authors for best book-length | | | | this form in the Library of America edition. |
| manuscript. Harper's published the collection with "Fire | | | | This book details his involvement with the John Reed |
| and Cloud," "Long Black Song," "Down by the | | | | Clubs and the Communist Party, which he left in 1942, |
| Riverside," and "Big Boy Leaves Home"; in 1940 the | | | | though the book implies that it was earlier, and his |
| story "Bright and Morning Star" was added, and the | | | | leaving was not made public until 1944. In its restored |
| book was reissued.The collection earned him a | | | | form, its diptych structure mirrors the certainties and |
| Guggenheim Fellowship, which allowed him to complete | | | | intolerance of organized communism, (the "bourgeois" |
| his first novel, Native Son (1940). | | | | books to McCarthyism, Wright was blacklisted by the |
| After Uncle Tom's Children, Wright declared in "How | | | | Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s. |
| Bigger Was Born" that he needed to write a book that | | | | The later section about his life in Chicago and |
| bankers' daughters would not be able to "read and feel | | | | experience with the Communist party was not |
| good about," that would "be so hard and deep that | | | | published until 1977 under the title American Hunger. |
| they would have to face it without the consolation of | | | | Wright's publishers in 1945 had only wanted the story |
| tears"; That novel was Native Son which followed in | | | | of his life in the South and cut what followed about his |
| 1940. Native Son was uncompromisingly honest and | | | | life in the North. There have been numerous |
| unsparing in its depiction of the roughness and cruelties | | | | biographies of Wright, but all must begin with Black |
| of black life.It contained extremities of violence and | | | | Boy, Wright's personal and emotional account of his |
| horror which are not likely to inspire anything but fear | | | | childhood and adolescence in the Jim Crow South. In a |
| and significantly enough Wright titled the first of the | | | | famous passage in the autobiography that has |
| book's three parts FEAR. Many white Americans saw | | | | bothered critics and set Wright apart from the |
| Bigger Thomas, the central character as a symbol of | | | | African-American sense of community, he asserts the |
| the entire black community. Wright who is himself an | | | | "cultural barrenness of black life": " . . . I used to mull |
| avid filmgoer wanting to give the story a sense of | | | | over the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, |
| immediacy and closeness, told the story in the present | | | | how unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in |
| as he 'wanted the reader to feel that Bigger's story | | | | genuine passion we were, how void of great hope, |
| was happening now, like a play upon a stage or a | | | | how timid our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow |
| movie..." | | | | our memories, how lacking we were in those intangible |
| This young black man, Bigger Thomas lives in a | | | | sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow |
| one-room apartment in Chicago's South Side Black | | | | was even our despair." He found an "unconscious |
| Belt with his mother, his younger sister, Vera, and | | | | irony" in the idea that "Negroes led so passionate an |
| younger brother, Buddy. Bigger in time gets employed | | | | existence": "I saw that what had been taken for our |
| by the Daltons, a wealthy white family, as their | | | | emotional strength was our negative confusions, our |
| chauffeur. The rat-infested building in which Bigger his | | | | flights, our fears, our frenzy under pressure." |
| mother, his brother and his sister is owned by Mr | | | | Statements like these are contradicted by others that |
| Dalton who instead of maintaining and letting out | | | | describe a caring community. For example, when |
| decent houses prefers to cover up his sins by giving | | | | Wright's mother suffers a paralytic stroke, "the |
| out money for social welfare. The Dalton's | | | | neighbors nursed my mother day and night, fed us and |
| liberal-minded daughter, Mary, befriends Bigger as he | | | | washed our clothes," and Wright admits to being |
| drives her and she leads him to drive her under an | | | | "ashamed that so often in my life I had to be fed by |
| oath of secrecy to the Communist headquarters | | | | strangers. |