The Artistry Of The Novel Native Son

Richard Wright is the first black writer who became famous in the white world. When Wright was young and inexperienced, he published four kinds of books in seven years. Every book was welcomed by the readers and critics. His maiden work was the novel Uncle Tom's children, which was the model of the fashionable so-called "proletarian literature." The second book was the novel Native Son published in 1940. The novel could be sold 2,000 copies one day. Wright became the first black writer of bestsellers. The next year he published the novel 12 Million Black Voices, which was a story describing a lot of black men migrating from the south to the north.Native Son received much critical response after its publication. Early critics, such as Edward Margolies, Keneth Kinnamon, and Michel Fabre, discuss his recurring themes and his life. They are largely biographical and sociological. But in fact, the artistry of the novel also attracted people's attention. Edwin Berry Burgum's "The Art of Richard Wright's Short Stories" address itself to Wright's artistry. Katherine Fishburn, in Richard Wright's Hero: The Faces of a Rebel-Victim, succinctly describes the emergence of naturalism and existentialism in Wright's characterization of Bigger. Richard Joyce Ann Joyce's Richard Wright's Art of Tragedy examines Wright's craftsmanship in Native Son, analyzing his meticulous use of language and rhetorical strategies. Her careful study of the novel's style reveals that Bigger Thomas is not a naturalistic victim but a tragic hero.These critiques fastened mainly on the theme and the politics of the novel, but in fact, the artistry of the novel also reached high level. Considering this fact, this essay use textual analysis to analyze the artistry, including the images, the sentence pattern, the colors and the structure of the novel Native Son. This essay is composed of four chapters. The first chapter is about the images, including the image of vision, wall, snow and sun. One of the most prevalent aspects of the artistry of Native Son is the persistence of the image of vision which pervades every significant moment. The frequent appearance of these images would suggest that this book is not only about racial violence, not only a vehicle of "chase adventure," nor a courtroom drama, nor astudy of urban mechanization. It is, rather, an analysis of "perception"' which documents the effect prejudice, alienation, oppression, and isolation have on one's ability to "see" and "be seen" clearly. The other important image Wright uses is the image of wall. The image of wall is used reiteratively, implying the narrowness of the social life, and also indicating that racist America is a big prison without freedom to the black. The use of this image is a success. Snow is another dominant image in Native Son, skillfully joining the color white and the image of vision to form an image group that evokes the hostility, insensitivity, and lack of perception of the white world and emphasizing the unnatural power the white world holds over the Black. The sun contrasts with the snow, illuminating Bigger as the hero determined to maintain his pride and to subvert those forces that deny his humanity. The use of the sun to counteract negative responses to a rebellious protagonist beautifully evidences Wright's skill at sustaining a balance between the subjectivity rooted in the author's identification with his characters and the objectivity reflected in the artist's superb mastery of his craft. The images in Native Son have high literary meaning. The use of the images has achieved the mature level.The second chapter is about the use of sentence pattern. The periodic, balanced and compound sentences in the novel unite with the symbols to supplement Wright's theme. The periodic sentence which summarize past events, introduce Bigger's state of mind, and justify his actions both alleviate the intensity of the terror evoked by Bigger's harsh actions and emphasize the changes in his state of mind at different intervals. The balanced and compound sentences prove to be even more illuminative of his paradox. The use of several sentence patterns enriches the novel's power of expression.The third chapter is about the use of colors. Wright figuratively uses the colors black, white, and yellow. Wright's use of language punctuates the irony and ambiguity of Bigger's personality. Irony in Bigger's characterization, in the sequence of events that affect his life, and in the language is the foundation upon which Wright builds his tragic theme. The fact that Bigger is at once separate from others (that is, individual) and at the same time connected to them (that is, universal) parallels the ambiguous,interlocked symbols of the snow, the sun, and the wall, and the colors white, yellow, and black. Complementing Bigger's ambiguous characterization and ironic events that shape his destiny are the interconnections among the rhythmic sentence patterns, the colors black, white, and yellow. The use of colors further enriches the novel 's expression technique.The fourth chapter is about the structure. Impressive evidence of the formal artistry of Native Son is revealed in its conscious use of structure. Both in the way Wright carefully constructed the novel's plot and in the way he ingeniously crafted intricate patterns of imagery to reinforce the plot's central meaning, he was able to build a novel that was well equipped to dramatize his vision of life powerfully and coherently. The narrative structure of Native Son can thus be seen as an elaborate sequence of scenes that are organized as a series of concentric circles, reverberating against one another to produce effects that become richer and more complex as the novel develops. This kind of structure makes the novel more ravishing. The images used in these three scenes are carefully structured in elaborate patterns to accentuate the deterministic nature of Bigger's experiences. In the beginning of the novel its networks of imagery and its narrative structure wok together to define the massive environmental forces conditioning the central character. Gradually, however, an important reversal takes place as patterns of action and imagery reveal Bigger's growing awareness of how environment works. Although he is never able to master his outward environment by literally reshaping it to suit his needs, Bigger can gain control over himself and undergo significant inward growth, thus achieving a human dignity that the outward environment is intent on destroying.Thus drinking from a rich variety of cultural streams, all of which flow in a deep and complex harmony, Native Son is a major achievement in modern literature. The marked feature of the novel of Native Son are using various images to supplement the theme, figurative using the colors and sentence pattern which punctuates the irony and ambiguity of Bigger's personality;Concentric circles structure makes the novel more ravishing. Wright's novel not only revitalized modern, American, and Afro-American tradition by creating a new kind of hero and providing a fresh look at black urban lifebut also deepened its own meanings by connecting the hero's experience to these multiple levels of literary tradition. It therefore achieved the originality, depth, and resonance expected of a genuine masterwork. This essay illuminates that this novel not only has clear theme, but also has high artistry level, craftily use the images, sentence patterns, colors and structure, and refutes some people's opinion that black writers' work lacks artistry. The high artistry of the novel marked the primary maturity of the African American literature.