{"id":909,"date":"2023-09-17T18:05:23","date_gmt":"2023-09-17T22:05:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=909"},"modified":"2023-09-17T18:05:23","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T22:05:23","slug":"character-and-intent-in-native-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2023\/09\/17\/character-and-intent-in-native-son\/","title":{"rendered":"Character and Intent in Native Son"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">       Wright\u2019s <em>How Bigger Was Born <\/em>section of <em>Native Son <\/em>is remarkably in line with a good amount of the critiques brought up in class and in previous reflections. I was particularly interested to see if Wright would address or anticipate some of those critiques. He does, and in doing so, Wright revealed what I think is a very prevalent theme in how <em>Native Son<\/em> is presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">       Wright completely dismisses any opinion contrary to his own. Several sections of <em>How Bigger Was Born<\/em> were particularly striking, namely \u201cI felt with all of my being that he was more important than what any person, white or black, would say or try to make of him\u201d (450). That is Wright\u2019s only addressal of the complaint that he paints a bleak picture of Black identity. That is a woefully inadequate position, because Wright seems to be dismissing the very experience of the reader, which is, in basic terms, the point of writing a character. \u201cThey did not want people, especially <em>white<\/em> people, to think that their lives were so much as touched by anything so dark and brutal as Bigger\u201d (449-450) is another claim Wright makes about issues the Black community might have with <em>Native Son<\/em>. But he doesn\u2019t go any further. Wright makes no claim and records no thought about what effect that might have on the reader. Which, once again, is the purpose of writing a book. Telling a story that affects a reader, whether purposefully or not. I think that is why <em>Native Son<\/em> seems somewhat inconclusive as well. Several of us in class asked the question: so what? Where do we go from here? What\u2019s the point of portraying Bigger this way? Wright explains how but not why, which leads the story and the explanation to seem somewhat inadequate.\u00a0 Wright also completely dismisses any notion of Black pride or culture with the simple line, \u201cStill others projected their hurts and longings into more naive and mundane forms\u2013blues, jazz, swing\u2013and, without intellectual guidance, tried to build up a compensatory nourishment for themselves\u201d (439). Once again, Wright offers no clarification as to why this is bad, why such forms are \u201cnaive\u201d, or why Bigger\u2019s lens on Black America is more apt. Finally, Wright makes not a single reference to the role of women in Bigger\u2019s life. The seldom times he mentions rape, which is a massive part of <em>Native Son<\/em>, he solely discusses rape in the context of its connotations for Black men, which are undoubtedly present, but is entirely dismissive of women. This explanation reaffirms conclusions about <em>Native Son<\/em>: Wright focuses the story with an incredibly narrow lens, that not only highlights a very particular approach to Blackness, but also dismisses any other approach to those topics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wright\u2019s How Bigger Was Born section of Native Son is remarkably in line with a good amount of the critiques brought up in class and in previous reflections. I was particularly interested to see if Wright would address or anticipate some of those critiques. He does, and in doing so, Wright revealed what I think &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2023\/09\/17\/character-and-intent-in-native-son\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Character and Intent in Native Son<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4681,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[471414],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4681"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":910,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions\/910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}