Native Son

Bigger emerged as a new kind of protagonist: the lone, marginalized figure who is aware that he is trapped by a society that views him as subhuman. Native Son does not ask its reader to root for Bigger, or to empathize with his brutal actions in the novel. However, the novel demonstrates that sympathy and pity for a likeable character’s hardships only serve to divide oppressed people into two categories: the deserving and the undeserving. Wright chooses a protagonist whose hate turns him into exactly what white oppressors fear: a stereotypical murderer of a white woman. Wright also shows that white oppressors are culpable for creating what they fear. The title of the novel emphasizes that Bigger isn’t an outsider or an anomaly. He is a native son, an American who was born and raised in a country steeped in racism. He is what he was made to be.

Bigger is a 20-year-old Black man who was born in Mississippi, where his father was killed in a riot, before moving with his family to the South Side of Chicago. As the protagonist of the novel, Bigger drives the story through his actions and choices. But unlike the traditional role of the protagonist, Bigger doesn’t make choices to drive the action.