Characters

• Bigger Thomas: The protagonist, a 20-year-old African American man living in poverty on Chicago's South Side. He accidentally kills a white woman and descends into a cycle of violence and flight.
• Mary Dalton: The daughter of Bigger's wealthy white employer. Her accidental death at Bigger's hands sets the plot in motion.
• Jan Erlone: Mary's Communist boyfriend who tries to befriend Bigger. He later helps defend Bigger, despite being framed for Mary's murder.
• Mr. Dalton: Mary's father and Bigger's employer. A wealthy real estate magnate who exploits Black tenants while claiming to help them.
• Mrs. Dalton: Mary's blind mother whose presence in Mary's room leads to her accidental death.
• Bessie Mears: Bigger's girlfriend whom he later rapes and murders to keep her quiet.
• Boris Max: The Communist lawyer who defends Bigger at his trial.
• Buckley: The state's attorney prosecuting Bigger.
• Gus, Jack, and G.H.: Bigger's friends and fellow gang members.
• Mrs. Thomas: Bigger's religious mother who struggles to support the family.
• Vera and Buddy Thomas: Bigger's younger sister and brother.

Quick facts

• Richard Wright wrote the first draft of Native Son in just four months while living in Brooklyn.
• Native Son was published in 1940 and became an immediate success, selling 250,000 copies within three weeks of publication.
• Native Son was the first book by an African American author to be selected by the Book-of-the-Month Club.
The character of Bigger Thomas was partly based on Robert Nixon, a real-life murderer executed in Chicago in 1939.
• Nelson Algren, an established writer and Wright’s friend, had planned to use “Native Son” as the title for his own novel but gave Wright permission to use it instead.
• Native Son has been banned and challenged numerous times in schools and libraries due to its violence, language, and sexual content.
• Wright originally included a scene where Bigger masturbates in a movie theater, but this was removed at the request of the Book-of-the-Month Club.
• Native Son was adapted into a Broadway play in 1941, directed by Orson Welles and starring Canada Lee as Bigger Thomas.
• Wright himself played the role of Bigger Thomas in a 1951 film adaptation of the novel, despite being twice the age of the character.
• More recently, Native Son was adapted into a 2019 HBO film directed by Rashid Johnson.
• Native Son is ranked #20 on the Modern Library's list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.
• The novel's epigraph comes from the Book of Job in the Bible: “Even today is my complaint rebellious, My stroke is heavier than my groaning."

About the author

Richard Wright (1908-1960) was an influential African American author whose works explored racial themes and the everyday lives of Black Americans. Born in Mississippi, Wright faced poverty and racial discrimination in his youth before moving North as part of the Great Migration. His experiences growing up in the Jim Crow South profoundly shaped his writing and worldview.

Wright's career as an author took off in the late 1930s with the publication of his short story collection Uncle Tom's Children. However, it was his 1940 novel Native Son that catapulted him to national prominence. The controversial book, which told the story of a young Black man in Chicago driven to violence, became a bestseller. Wright followed the novel in 1945 with his memoir Black Boy, further cementing his status as a leading voice on the Black experience in America.

In 1946, Wright left the United States and settled in France as an expatriate. During this period, he continued writing novels, essays, and nonfiction works, including The Outsider and White Man, Listen!. He also developed an interest in existentialism and became friends with French intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Though living abroad, Wright remained engaged with issues of race and politics in America and globally, writing about decolonization movements and traveling to emerging independent nations in Africa and Asia. Wright died in Paris at the age of 52, leaving behind a powerful literary legacy. His unflinching portrayals of racism and its psychological toll helped pave the way for future generations of Black writers and contributed to changing racial attitudes in mid-20th century America.