Going Beyond The Uncanny:An Interpretation Of Native Son In The Light Of Freudian Psychological Theory

As one of the best African American writers, Richard Wright is famous for his “protest novel”. His masterpiece Native Son has become a milestone in the history of African American literature. As a “new novel” of black literature, Native Son is often read as a rebellion declaration and the protagonist Bigger Thomas a new black hero. In Wright’s time, the thought of Freudian psychology and Sartre’s existentialism overtly set off a prosperous wave in literary circle, and Native Son is an evidence that Wright is profoundly influenced by them. This research attempts to scrutinize the novel in the light of Freudian psychology, i.e., the theory of “the uncanny” and “tripartite personality”, and aims at revealing the perplexed psychological activity of Bigger Thomas as well as the uncanniness of the story. On the one hand, the primal scenes of Bigger’s uncanny feeling are not only from the white world, but also from his own black community, and the source of his uncanny feeling is embodied in “doubling”, which suggests the white world, so his fear, or the repressed comes from the moral principles(superego) that the white society imposes upon. Furthermore, Bigger’s fear of losing power is, in Freudian theory, a metaphor of “castration complex”. On the other hand, the way of Bigger’s efforts in surmounting the uncanny by violence brings about the imbalanced tripartite personality, i.e., the imbalanced ego is formed in the fierce conflict between id and superego, which leads to the reappearance of the repressed traces, and this uncanny recurrence makes the uncanniness of the story. Through the analysis, this research concludes that racism is the root of Bigger’s tragic ending, as well as the fear of Bigger and his people.