Native Son | Literary Precedents
Called the black version of An American Tragedy (Dreiser, 1925), Native Son adheres more closely to the naturalistic method practiced by Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis than Uncle Tom's Children had. Bigger's willful violence makes him at best an antihero, and any hope for melioration seems remote. Wright's careful documentation of Bigger's condition and his reproduction of newspaper accounts is reminiscent of the popular social novels written by John Dos Passos, John Steinbeck, and James T. Farrell. At its worst moments, Native Son...
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