The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

Richard Wright was an African-American author whose literary works mainly concerned with racial themes, especially related to how the African Americans suffered the discrimination and violence during the late 19th to mid-20th centuries. In his Native Son, Wright presents an overwhelming racial conflicts between the black and the white through a symbolic murder—Bigger Thomas, a poor young black man, accidentally murders Mary Dalton, a rich white girl. Bigger’s fear of being arrested is soon replaced by a sense of excitement of escaping from the suspicion. Viewing Bigger’s predicament as part of an ongoing historical process is important to the author’s intention: Wright wants to demonstrate how the racial injustice hurts the black as well as the white. My approach to Native Son discusses Bigger’s excitement twofold to understand the racial theme: one is his excitement comes from his manipulation of the social stereotypes of the black to misdirect his murder investigation; the other is how Bigger identifies himself after committing the bloody murders. I apply Frantz Fanon’s concept of black consciousness to analyze how Bigger views himself in the white’s world, and how he from his excitement senses his freedom and creates himself a new identity. Native Son deals with the racial divide in America in which African Americans struggle in the social conditions imposed by the dominant white society. This article provides a meaningful sociocultural context to teachers to examine the society of Native Son and its connection to Bigger’s excitement and his black identity from murders.

racial discrimination, murder, excitement, social stereotype, black consciousness, identity