Native son

Native son

The Author

Richard Wright

Richard Nathan, Wright was born in September 4th 1908 In Roxie, Mississippi. His Father Nathan Wright, an Illiterate sharecropper¹, his mother, Ella was a schoolteacher. When Wright was five his father left the family, and his mother was left to take domestic jobs away from the house.   During this time, Wright and his brother spent time at an orphanage.   Soon his mother became ill; therefore, Wright and his brother had to constantly move to stay with relative. Wright moved from school to school, graduating from the ninth grade as the valedictorian of his class. After grade school, Wright briefly attended high school, but had to drop out after a few weeks to work. He then took odd jobs, so that he could save money to leave Memphis. After leaving Memphis, Wright went to Chicago where he worked the post office. Shortly after the Stock Market crash, he loss his job. While in Chicago, he joined the communist party. He eventually moved to New York, where he published reviews and political essays in Communist Party publications.   In 1940, He completed his first novel Native Son; he published several novels during his lifetime. He eventually moved to France where he becomes a French citizen. He never set foot back in the United States, he died in 1960 in Paris, and the cause of his death is listed as a heart attack.
 
Characters and plot

Bigger Thomas:   is the central character of Native son, he is twenty years old, mad, and angry by the Chicago tenement where he lives with his family. He is frustrated by segregation and hatred of whites who have the money and opportunities that he does not have in the ghetto. He uses violence to exercise power within his own community.
Mrs Thomas : Bigger’s mother. She wants bigger to get a job and stay out of trouble, she turns religion as a mean of escape from poverty, and the horror of bigger’s crime.
Vera: Bigger’s younger sister, does not appear much in the novel. She is afraid of her...