Identity Crisis And Social Struggle In Richard Wright’s Native Son

Identity Crisis And Social Struggle In Richard Wright’s Native Son 

Chapter One: Introduction

Background To The Study

The term, African-Americans also referred to as black Americans or Afro-Americans are the ethnic group of Americans citizens or residents of the United States with total or partial ancestry from any of the black racial groups of African. Black and African Americans constitute the third largest racial and ethnic group in the United States after white Americans. Most African Americans are of West and Central African descent and are descendants of enslaved peoples within the boundaries of the present United States. After the founding of the United States, black people continued to be enslaved, with four million denied freedom from bondage prior to the Civil War. Believed to be inferior to white people, they were treated as second class citizens.

African-American literature is the body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. The genre traces its origins to the works of such late eighteenth century writers as Phillis Wheatley and Olaudah Equiano, reaching early high points with slave narratives and the Harlem Renaissance and continuing today with authors such as Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and Walter Mosley. Among the themes and issues explored in African American literature are the role of African Americans within the larger American Society, African-American Culture, racism, slavery and equality. African American writing has also tended to incorporate oral forms such as spiritual, sermons, gospel music, blues and rap. In African American literary writing we have Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs former slaves who wrote the slave narratives, Phillis Wheatley, Jupiter Hammon as the early Negro poets their idea also promoted the idea of a gradual emancipation as a way of ending slavery. After the end of slavery and the American Civil War, a number of African American authors continued to write non-fiction works about the condition of African Americans in the country.

Among the most prominent of these writers is W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963), one of the original founders of the NAACP. Du Bois published a highly influential collection of essays titled The Soul’s of Black Folk. The book’s essay on race were groundbreaking, drawing from Dubois’s personal experiences to describe how African Americans lived in American society. The book contains Du Bois’s famous quote: “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the colour line”. He believed that African Americans should because of their common interest, work together to battle prejudices and inequity. Another prominent author of this time period is Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) who in many ways represented opposite views from Du Bois. Washington was an educator and the founder of the Tuskegee institute, a Black College in Alabama. Among his published works are Up from slavery (1901), The Future of the American Negro (1899), Tuskegee and its people (1905). In contrast to Du Bois, who adopted a more confrontational attitude toward ending racial strife in America, Washington believed that Blacks should first lift themselves up and prove themselves the equal of whites before asking for an end to racism. Another writer of the period Paul Laurence Dunbar, who often wrote in the rural black dialect of the day, was the first African American poet to gain national prominence. His first book of poetry, Oak and Ivy, published in 1893 and other works revealed the glimpses into the lives of rural African-Americans of the day.

The Harlem Renaissance from 1920-1940 brought new attention to African American literature while the Harlem Renaissance, based in the African American Community in Harlem in New York City, existed as a larger flowering of social thought and culture with numerous Black artists, musicians, and others producing classic works in fields from Jazz to theater. The renaissance is perhaps best known for its literary output, famous writers of the renaissance period include poet Langston Hughes, Claude Mckay, Jean Toomer etc. their writings focused on interracial prejudice between lighter skinned and darker-skinned African Americans. The Harlem Renaissance marked a turning point for African-American literature. Prior to this time, books by African Americans were primarily read by other Black people.

During the Civil rights movement era, a large migration of African Americans began during World War I, hitting its high point during World War II. During this great migration, black people left racism and lack of opportunities in the American South and settled in northern cities such as Chicago where they found work in factories and other sectors of the economy. This migration produced a new sense of independence in the Black community and contributed to the vibrant Black urban culture seen during the Harlem Renaissance. The migration also empowered the growing American Civil rights Movement which made a powerful impression on Black writers during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Just as black activists were pushing to end segregation and racism and create a new sense of Black nationalism, so too were black authors attempting to address these issues with their writings. One of the first writers to do so was James Baldwin, whose work addressed issues of race and sexuality. Baldwin, who is best known for his novel Go Tell It On the Mountain wrote deeply personal stories and essays while examining that it was like to be both black and homosexual at a time when neither of these identities was accepted by American culture. Baldwin’s idol and friend was author Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called “The greatest Black writer in the world for me”. Wright is best known for his novel Native Son (1940) which tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a Black man struggling for acceptance in Chicago. Among Wright’s other books are the autobiographical novel Black Boy (1945), The outsider (1953) and White Man Listen (1957). The other great novelist of this period is Ralph Ellison, best known for his novel Invisible man (1952) which was so influential that it secured his place in literary history.

With respect to Richard Wright’s Native Son, the systemic structure is characterized by white male patriarchy that allows for Black males to have the ability to negotiate the way in which they have been socialized and institutionalized to think, act, and behave because they are men. However, the reality of race and the lack of diversity in the purest sense, impedes upon this effort and cripples the blacks ability to truly transition into manhood. He is left to constant struggle and fight for an identity, for power, for respect and for understanding of who he is versus what he is protected as: a nigger. For nearly one hundred years, the reality of life for Black men in America would be distinguished by a system of legal apartheid, murder and struggle for freedom. As the life of a black man was viewed unequal to that of a white person, the U.S. Department of Public Health initiated the experimentation of 399 black men most of them were illiterate share croppers. The dawning of the Civil rights era would breathe hope into the tyrannized Black man. Characterized by social revolution, the consciousness of the age reflected, the disdain of black people towards racism which for over 400 years left them in the revolving door of oppression, subjugation and depression and are symbolically castrated and had failed to operate with full citizenship. 1964 would appear to be the turning point with passing of the Civil Rights Acts that prohibited discrimination of all kinds on the basis of race, color and religion. This paper will examine the social struggle and identity crisis in Wright’s Native Son which forces the blacks to view themselves through the lens of the dominant culture that does not perceive and does not allow them to function as equal.

1.2 Statement of the Problem

The oppression of the blacks in America is as a result of the skin colour which evokes the struggle for identity and self image because of the prevailing American powers.

The white men worked on the psychology of the blacks by making them believe they were inferior and also by symbolizing their black skin with ‘bad’, ‘ugly’ and ‘hell’.

However, the search for identity and the need for social struggle as a social system has caused perpetual ill treatment of the blacks in America. Although there had been series of research on this issue. Thus this research serves to provide additional information on the existing body of work.

1.3 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The aims and objectives of the research are to:

i Investigate racial prejudice in Richard Wright’s Native Son;

ii Study the text inorder to reveal the issue of identity and social struggle which coalesce into the system of oppression of the blacks by the whites; and

iii Examine the domination of one group of people over the other to the drama of race in American with respect to the text.

1.4 Research Methodology

This research intends to carry out a study in identity crisis and social struggle through the proper analysis of a text entitled, Native Son by Richard Wright. Other sources which will be consulted include: journals, internet materials, library and scholarly articles to gather information. This research employs psychoanalytic as a theory to articulate the concerns of an African writer Richard Wright. It is believed that this approach will best expose the inner mind and psychological torture of the black characters in Native Son. This approach has helped to review visual and close insight of confrontations and conflicts between the blacks and the whites.

1.5 Theoretical Framework

According to the Oxford English Dictionary: psychoanalytic is a method of psychological therapy originated by Sigmund Freud in which free association, dream interpretation, and analysis of resistance and transference are used to explore repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts.

Psychoanalytic theorists believe that human behavior is deterministic. It is governed by irrational forces and the unconscious, as well as instinctual and biological drives. Sigmund Freud determined that the personality consist of three different elements, the id, the ego and the superego.

The id is the aspect of personality that is driven by internal and basic drives and needs. These are typically instinctual, such as hunger, thirst, and the drive for sex, or libido. The id acts in accordance with the pleasure principle, in that it avoids pain and seeks pleasure. Due to the instinctual quality of the id, it is impulsive and often unaware of implications of actions.

The ego is driven by reality principle. The ego works to balance both the id and superego. To balance these, it works to achieve the id’s drive in the most realistic ways. It seeks to rationalize the id’s instinct and please the drives that benefit the individual in the long term.

The super-ego is driven by morality principle. It acts in connection with the morality of higher thought and action. Instead of instinctively acting like the id, the superego works to act in socially acceptable ways. It employs morality, judging our sense of wrong and right and using guilt to encourage socially acceptable behavior.

This theory has three elements that characterized Bigger’s action in the novel, identity crisis and social struggle drives a black male to second guess his every move and push away everything that is or could be close to him as he attempts to find a purpose to define his existence.

1.6 Significance of the Study

This study will be of benefit to learners as well as scholars in the area of African American literature and literature as a whole. This research will also contribute to the existing body of knowledge in this filed of study and also serve as a useful reference material for future references.

1.7 Structure of the Work

This research is structured into five chapters.

Chapter one has the general introduction which comprises: Background to the study, statement of the problem, Aims and objectives of the study, Research methodology, Theoretical Framework, significance of the study and structure of the work.

Chapter two contains literature review.

Chapter three contains the subject matter of the research which includes: identity crisis and social struggle in Richard Wright’s Native Son.

Chapter four we have style in Native Son; literary techniques in Native Son and Language in Native Son.

Finally, chapter five as the conclusion.