Margolies Native Son Thesis

Alhassan Bundu-Conteh
Native Son
Introduction to Literature
Dr. Brenda Doharris
Sept. 29th 2009

Margolies, Edward. "Revolution; Native son"
The Art of Richard Wright. Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1969.
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Summary

In this essay, Margolies's main thesis is that Wright's novel, Native Son does have obvious flaws but its impact on today's readers is just as profound as it was in 1940. The body of the essay is an enlargement of his arguments supporting this thesis. The essay can roughly be divided into three sections: the first section examines the weaknesses of what Margolies describes as "proletarian literature". The second examines
Margolies then identifies some failings of proletarian literature. First, Native Son is patently propagandistic calling for the establishment of a new and humane socialist system where such crimes as Bigger commits could not happen. A second is over documentation. Wright does too much documentation to demonstrate that Bigger's actions, behavior and fate have already been determined by his inferior status in American society. His bleak negro world stands in agonizing contrast to the glittering, affluent and vibrant white world which is inaccessible to him because of his color and class. A third weakness is the lack of in-depth character portrayal. Only Bigger is realistically portrayed in depth; the others are delineated as representative types of the social class to which they belong. A fourth weakness is that Bigger, in spite of his terrible psychological conditioning is depicted as the stereotyped communist version of black and white workers enjoying fraternal solidarity. A final weakness is Wright's penchant for didactics. He instructively and obsessively drives home sociological themes in didactic expository (explanatory) prose when these themes could just as easily be understood in terms of the organic development of the novel.
He advances reasons for the enduring impact of the novel. Native Son fails because its ideologies are inconsistent; it also fails because of what he calls an "irresolution of philosophical attitudes" which did not allow Bigger and other characters to develop fully. He also contends that non of the three kinds of revolution in Native Son represents Wright's viewpoint. Revolutionary communism is foreign and not an essential force in Bigger's life. Bigger's visions of a communist utopia are so out of his character that Wright is unable to sustain him long in it. Another kind of revolution, negro (black) nationalism is more in tune with Bigger's character. Bigger accepts responsibility for Mary's death because of his pathological hatred of whites. Killing Mary gives him strength and happiness because such and act outrages whites and anything that makes whites unhappy conversely makes him happy. Margolies also attributes a political nationalism to Bigger- a solidarity with all oppressed black people directed against whites. He contends that Wright's greatest success is in portraying Bigger as a metaphysical revolutionary rebel. It is in this role that Bigger's significance is appreciated by modern readers. As a metaphysical revolutionary, he challenges the terrible conditions of his life, the agonizing contrast between his innate sense of fair play and the