On Writing Strategies Of Native Son

Native son is a unique fictional experiment of the African-American literature—unique in relation to Wright's other novels and to modern African-American fiction generally. Indeed, it is not too much to claim that in point of technique it constitutes the last radical innovation in fictional method since Langston Hughes. A difficult work, its difficulties do not inhere in verbal subtleties or in excessive refinement of perception, but in the strain imposed upon attention and sensibility in comprehending the fiction which is trying to overmaster the readers' heart with its multiple writing strategies.Every reader of the novel is struck by its curiously heightened pitch, its brooding intensity. Wright did not put too fine an edge on its language which have been effected deeply by naturalism. What has not yet been studied in-depth is how this fiction puts up the writer's magnificent conception and style through the multiple writing strategies. Based on the accomplishments made by those giants who have contributed a lot to the study of Native Son, and with an attempt to achieve a better understanding of this fiction, this thesis is devoted to a further analysis of the multiple writing strategies concerning the subject. This cognitive approach to Native Son will help us gain a better insight into the very nature of the fiction.Besides a brief introduction and conclusion, this thesis is divided into there chapters.Chapter One is a detailed discussion of the symbolic methods in Native Son. Native Son probes into the feelings as a Negro with a vivid tone of writing. Many readers have found him a powerful and disturbing symbol of black rage. His name seems to combine the words "big" and "nigger", suggesting the aggressive racial stereotype he comes to embody. As Max indicates, Bigger does not have a great deal of choice. Bigger, as an image, is provided with a symbolic meaning. Just as Wright said if we multiplied Bigger by 12 million (the population of America is 12 million at that time), we got the thought of the whole black race. 1 Wright reminded us constantly in his novel Bigger is a "native son". Bigger was not exclusively a black phenomenon. Wright saw, just as Bigger does in Native Son that millions of whites suffered as well, and he believed that the direct cause of this suffering was the structure of American society itself. Native Son thus represents Wright's urgent warning that if American social and economic realities did not change, the oppressed masses would soon rise up in fury against those in power.The title of the novel implies that Bigger's descent into criminality and violence is an inherently American story. Bigger is not alien to or outside of American culture—on the contrary, he is a "native son". His experiences are a part of the entire American experiences, and what he did is a result of the American society. Just like Bigger, the other characters in the novel have their own symbolic functions. 伯纳德·W·贝尔著,刘捷等译,2000,《非洲裔美国黑人小说及其传统》,成都:四川人民出版社Mrs. Dalton's blindness plays a crucial role in the circumstances of Bigger's murder of Mary. On a symbolic level, this set of circumstances serves as a symbol for the vicious circle of racism in American society: The inability of whites to see blacks as individuals causes blacks to live their lives in fear and hatred. Mrs. Dalton's blindness is representative of the inability of white Americans as a whole to see black Americans as anything other than the embodiment of their media-enforced stereotypes. Wright echoes Mrs. Dalton's literal blindness throughout the novel in his descriptions of other characters who are figuratively blind for one reason or another. Indeed, Bigger later realizes that, in a sense, even he has been blind, unable to see whites as individuals rather than a single oppressive mass. The novel adopts the symbolic writing strategy of "blindness" to express the estrangement between the white and the black. Neither the white nor the black can view each othe...