From A Solipsist To An Existentialist Hero

Native Son is not only universally acknowledged as the masterwork of African American writer Richard Wright(1908-1960),but also considered as a milestone in the history of African American literature.It tells the absorbing story of a "bad nigger" Thomas Bigger.Bigger kills an innocent white girl Mary,decapitates her and incinerates her body in a furnace.He blames his crime on Mary's communist boyfriend and blackmails her family.Then he murders his girlfriend Bessie for fear of being betrayed and finally is caught,tried and executed.Formally speaking,it is a violence novel,for the protest expressed by Wright's protagonist is in a higher key and culminates in his actions of violence and defiance,yet essentially it is a declaration of revolt,because with an honesty almost amounting to ruthlessness,Wright reveals the Negro reality in its most naked form in Native Son,and depicts his character as forcefully revolting against the hostile society.Native Son used to be read as an example of realist or naturalist novel,yet the story is immersed with an intensive coloring of existentialism.The central task of this paper is to read Native Son through the lens of Sartre's existential philosophy.With the support of a close reading,the analysis of the various characters according to the three patterns of bad faith,the suggestion of authenticity as the sole virtue of true human existence, the elaboration on the parallel of the development from the solipsistic phase to the reflective phrase in Sartre's existential philosophy and the protagonist's self-recovery from a victimized solipsist to an existentialist hero,are expected to provide new insights into the existential sources of Wright's fiction and researches into Sartre's existential philosophy.The paper is divided into five chapters.Chapter One is an introduction.It briefly introduces the life and writing career of Richard Wright and summarizes the plot of the story.Literature review on the previous research findings on the novel is also displayed in this chapter. Chapter Two gives a brief introduction to Existentialism and its new development, Sartre's philosophy and his definitions of the significant concepts "bad faith" and "authenticity".On the basis of the discussion above,this thesis aims to explore the existentialist dimension in Native Son.In Chapter Three,the concepts of "bad faith" and "authenticity" are adopted to analyze various characters in the novel.According to the three pattems of bad faith and by reference to the norm of authenticity,the author of this paper intends to offer a close interpretation to the various bad faith characters and to show how Bigger raises himself out of the state of bad faith and retrieves his authentic self.Chapter Four aims tO demonstrate the interrelation between the novel and Sartre's existential philosophy by drawing a parallel between the two major phases in the development of Sartre's philosophy and the protagonist's self-recovery.Chapter Five is the conclusion.It summarizes the previous chapters and points out that the protagonist's discarding bad faith for authenticity is an upward ascent.His conversion from a victimized solipsist to an existentialist hero surpasses racialism,and finds an echo in Sartre's existential philosophy,which is of referential significance to the exploration of human existence.