Plot Summary
Characters
Bigger Thomas: The hero of the novel
Mrs. Thomas: Bigger’s mother
Henry Dalton: A real estate owner/Mary’s father
Mrs. Dalton: Henry Dalton’s wife
Mary Dalton: The only child of the Daltons
Buddy Thomas: Bigger’s younger brother
Vera Thomas: Bigger ‘s sister
Jan Erione: Mary’s boyfriend
Bessie Mears: Bigger’s boyfriend
Jack Harding: A friend to Bigger
Peggy: Housekeeper
Mr.Boris Max: A Lawyer
Gus: A member of Bigger’s gang
G.H: A member of Bigger’s gang
Buckley: The state prosecutor
Britten: The investigator.
The Background Events to The Writing of The Novel
Richard Wright was an African American author of the novel; Native Son written in 1940.
The novel narrates the story of a twenty-year-old boy named Bigger Thomas, who is an African American youth, living in abject poverty in Chicago’s South Side which is known to be the abode of the poor in the 1930s.
The novel Native Son is the product of the aftermath of the 1938 arrest and trial of Robert Nixon, executed in 1934 as a result of a series of “brickbat murders” in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Book One: Fear
Bigger Thomas is woken by the sound of an alarm clock in a dark, one room that accommodates his sister, Vera, his brother, Buddy, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears and after a hot chase, Bigger kills the rat with an iron frying pan.
He then scares his sister Vera with the dead rat to the extent that she fainted. Mrs. Thomas reprimanded Bigger for this. Mrs. Thomas always shows hatred for the family because of the level of their poverty and the way they suffer which is beyond her power.
Bigger has an appointment that evening to see Mr. Dalton for a new job. His family depends on him and the burden is too much for him that at times he would think of leaving his responsibilities but when he thinks otherwise he would change his mind.
He meets Gus his friend in the poolroom and informs him how pessimistic he is whenever he thinks about the whites. They later meet G.H and Jack, in the course of their discussion, they plan to rob the whites, though they are scared of doing this, but none of them show it.
Bigger and Jack later go to the movies where they are further attracted to the ways of life of the whites, compared to the crude and primitive lives of the black in the movie.
After the movies, Bigger returns to the poolroom where he violently attacks Gus, forcing him to lick his blade in a demeaning way to hide his own cowardice. The fight ends any chance of the robbery occurring.
Bigger is eventually employed as a driver by Mr. Dalton. He finds it difficult to acclimatize himself to the large and luxurious environment he finds himself in as Mr. Dalton and his wife use strange words but try their best to be kind to Bigger.
The more they do that, the more they make him uncomfortable as he does not know what is expected of him.
Mary Dalton, their daughter asks Bigger why he does not belong to a union and says that her father is a capitalist. Bigger does not understand what Mary says and he is afraid to lose the job.
Bigger is later taken to his room by the cook, Peggy, an Irish man, who tells Bigger many things about the family that they are a nice family but advises him to avoid Mary’s communist friends.
Bigger Thomas drives Mary to meet her communist boyfriend Jan that night. He also takes Jan and Mary to the dinner as directed to meet other friends.
They ask him to sit with them at their table and call them by their first name, but he does not know how to respond to all these as he is just their driver.
They buy a bottle of rum and the two of them drink it and later have sex in the back seat of the car.
At their departure that night, Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her bedroom when they arrive home but afraid of someone seeing her in his arms. Bigger is tempted to kiss her and he does.
At that instance, Mrs. Dalton comes in, though blind, Bigger is terrified she will sense him there. He presses a pillow into Mary’s face to silence her. Mary holds tightly to Bigger’s hand to alert Bigger that she cannot breathe.
Mrs. Dalton smells alcohol in the room. Scolds her daughter and leaves the room.
When Bigger removes the pillow, he discovers that Mary has suffocated. He then plans to tell everyone that Jan took Mary into the house that night. He later thinks it’s better if Mary is not seen at all, so that they would think she has left Chicago.
He decides to burn the body in the house furnace, but the body would not enter the furnace because the opening is too small for her body. He then decapitates her and puts the body in the furnace, adds more coal to the furnace and leaves the body to burn to ashes, and goes home.
Book Two: Flight
Bessie, Bigger’s girlfriend suspects Bigger of Mary. Bigger goes back to work. Mr. Dalton invites Mr. Britten, a private detective for an investigation. Mr. Britten interrogates Bigger accusingly.
Bigger narrates the events of the previous evening so that Jan would be the prime suspect in the murder as he knows that Mr. Dalton hates Jan’s association with his daughter because he is a communist. Mr. Dalton then vouches for Bigger.
When Britten finds Jan, he brings him face to face with Bigger and confronts them with their conflicting stories and Jan is surprised by Bigger’s story but offer to help him.
When Bigger storms away from the Daltons, he plans to write a false kidnapping note when he discovers that Mr. Dalton is the owner of the house where he and his family live. He slips the note under Dalton’s front door and goes back to his room.
When they see the note, they then contact the police who take over the investigation from Mr. Britten. Journalists later arrive at the house and Bigger is afraid and plans to leave but doesn’t want to leave in the afternoon.
He is later ordered to evacuate the ashes in the furnace with shovel and make a new fire. He is terrified and starts poking the ashes until the room is full of smoke.
This annoys one of the journalists who push him aside, takes the shovel and later finds the remains of Mary’s bone and an earring in the furnace. On seeing this, Bigger runs away.
Bigger goes to Bessie and narrates the true story to her and Bessie feels that white people would think that Bigger rapes the girl before killing her. The duo moves from one place to another because Bessie is entertaining fears.
When they lie down in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides to kill Bessie in her sleep because she wants to talk to the police. He hits her on the head with a brick and then throws her through a window into an air shaft but later remembers that his only money is on Bessie.
Bigger runs helter-skelter and sees newspaper reports concerning the crime and overhears different conversations on the crime. He has nowhere to hide, because he has put shame on the black race, he cannot hide among them.
He is given a hot chase, even on the roof top; he is eventually nabbed and sent to prison.
Book Three: Fate
Bigger is remanded in prison custody and in his earlier days in prison, he refuses to eat, smoke, drink, or talk to anybody. Jan, Mary’s communist boyfriend visits him in the prison despite Bigger’s earlier plan to implicate Jan as the prime suspect in the murder of Mary.
Jan has believed that he learnt a big lesson from Bigger about black-white relationships. He encourages the services of a communist lawyer, Max for Thomas Bigger.
In the course of Max’s discussion with Bigger, he understands him more; his relationship and commitment to his family, his perception of the world as well as his beliefs about the white and his aggressiveness.
It is also discovered that Bigger wishes a meaningful for himself.
Eventually, Thomas Bigger is found guilty and sentenced to death by the judge for murder. He does not have any option than accepting his fate.
At a stage, he tells the family members not to visit him in the cell again as they regularly pay him a solidarity visit.
Explanation of Communism
For a better understanding of the discourse in the novel by the readers, it is very necessary to explain the meaning of Communism because it is a major topic discussed in the text.
It is a theory and system of social and political organisation that was a major force in world politics for much of the 20th century.
Communism is a political movement that goes against Capitalism which is a system whereby a group of people controls the trade, industry and economy of a country.