HAF2022 Blog

Ralph Ellison, the writer of Invisible Man , had interacted with Richard Wright, author of Native Son , a great deal before writing his story. The connections between his story and Wright's are clear throughout portions of the story, in moments such as Mr. Norton being depicted as a "parody" of Mr. Dalton or Emerson's talk with the narrator mirroring Jan's talk with Bigger. Each of these scenes can be interpreted as a criticism of Native Son, but I believe a much more clear example of Ellison's "jabs" at Wright is during the narrator's transformation. During chapter 11, we are exposed to an almost fever dream-like series of events, where the narrator is put through a series of strange mind-altering experiments. After undergoing electric shock therapy, the narrator gets discharged from the "factory hospital," seeming fine. Except that his entire personality seems to have changed. He is no longer sure of who he is and seems to have a newf...

In the book Native Son, we are introduced to the hostile climate of America in the year 1940 through the eyes of Bigger Thomas. Throughout the story, we see displays of this hostility in either explicit social forms or in deeper, more systemic structures. However, the main constant is that the climate of America during this time is extremely unaccepting of ________. The expected answer here would be African Americans, but this statement works just as well for communists. Richard Wright makes it extremely clear that both of these groups are extremely hated in the broader American society, and that while their circumstances aren't exactly equal, they are comparable to an extent. However, there exists a dynamic between these two groups. The Communist Party of the United States of America was a supporter of equal rights for African Americans, which is displayed very clearly throughout the entire story. Jan, Mary, and Max are the main examples of this attitude. Throughout the story, we ...