Lawd Today, completed by 1935 and released posthumously in 1963, is an anomaly in Richard Wright's canon since it was written first but published last. Not only has it puzzled critics since its publication, but it has elicited a variety of responses. Granville Hicks, in a review entitled “Dreiser to Farrell to Wright,” affectionately defended Lawd Today, calling it less powerful than Native Son or Black Boy but uniquely interesting.¹ What interested Hicks in this novel is that, though Wright was an avowed communist at the time of composition, he did not make a communist out of Jake Jackson, its protagonist. Jake even despises communism, but he also refuses to become a victim of capitalism. Sympathetic critics have considered Wright's delineation of Jake superb, or at least as good as that of any other character in his best fiction: Jake is uneducated, frustrated, but alive. Even James Baldwin, who had earlier assailed Wright's treatment of Bigger Thomas in Native Son,² came around and said “his great forte, it now seems to me, was an ability to convey inward states by means of externals.”³ In general, those opposed to Naturalism in modern fiction were not appreciative of Lawd Today. Nick Aaron Ford, a black critic, could not even believe that it was written by Richard Wright. Objecting to Wright's concept as well as technique, Ford deplored the book's melodramatic and disjointed pattern “with a multitude of hackneyed episodes.”⁴

Aside from Ford, no one has really objected to Wright's theme and content. Lawd Today is a black writer's painfully direct and honest rendition of a racial victim. To some readers, it is an interesting treatment of the anti-hero;⁵ to others, it is a satire on the mechanized urban society, a realistic portrayal of black life in Chicago's South Side in the depression years.⁶ Michel Fabre's biography of Wright shows that the details of Wright's experience in Chicago as a postal worker closely correspond to those in the novel.⁷

If Lawd Today is regarded as a failure, the flaw must be found in its form and technique. Externally the book resembles James Joyce's Ulysses, which Wright had read:⁸ the action is restricted to the classical unity of time and place. All the significant events of the protagonist's life occur in the same place and within twenty-four hours. Both Jake Jackson and Leopold Bloom are psychologically and sexually estranged from their wives; both have self-doubts and are socially frustrated. They suffer various nightmares and fantasies, go to bars with their friends, and meet prostitutes. But there are obvious differences: Jake is a black in white America while Bloom is a Jew in Catholic Ireland. Jake tries to air his frustration by physical violence; Bloom has an inward, brooding personality. The most important difference is that of style and technique. Joyce's parodies of English authors and his use of interior monologues, free association, question-and-answer form, and classical allusions are well blended in describing Bloom's world. On the other hand, Wright's use of radio broadcasts, card games, historical references, and his parodies of political systems are all interesting in themselves but may not be well suited for the one-dimensional characterization of Jake Jackson.

Unlike Bloom, Jake is not merely the protagonist but the only character whose actions constitute the action of the novel. The book is divided into three parts, “Commonplace,” “Squirrel Cage,” and “Rats' Alley,” each corresponding chronologically to the three periods in Jake's typical day. This might be compared to Wright's division of Native Son into “Fear,” “Flight,” and “Fate,” but his theme basically differs between the two novels. Both novels are Naturalistic in terms of philosophy: Jake and Bigger are largely victims of environment. In both Wright tries to show that their actions are the inevitable products of the circumstances and implies that one must blame society, not the individuals.

In terms of technique, however, the novels are not equally Naturalistic. Although both are filled with realistic detail and documentation, Wright does not weave metaphor into Native Son as consciously and as much as he does into Lawd Today.⁹ The allusiveness of the section titles in Lawd Today—“Commonplace,” “Squirrel Cage,” “Rats' Alley”—is further intensified by the epigraphs appropriate to Wright's purpose: Van Wyck Brook's America's Coming-of-Age, Waldo Frank's Our America, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, respectively. On the other hand, the titles in Native Son—“Fear,” “Flight,” “Fate”—are not only devoid of metaphor but free from any allusions to specific literary texts.

Wright's method in Lawd Today is two-fold. On the one hand, he has adopted social determinism, a version of literary naturalism, to account for Jake's behavior; on the other, he has accumulated documentary detail characteristic of a naturalistic style, but his scenes are imparted with gratuitous metaphors and images. Not that there is a disharmony between a given scene and its metaphorical allusion; indeed, each scene is carefully constructed to evoke an appropriate vision. Jake and his three black friends must put in eight boring hours through the night, sorting letters at the main post office in Chicago, “a squirrel cage.” The brothel Jake and his friends visit after work turns out to be “a rats' alley.” It is a nest for black gangsters, pimps, and prostitutes, as well as a symbol of decay and depravity in modern life.

But a disharmony exists between Wright's description of environment and the actions of Jake, in whom Wright's central interest presumably lies. One does not, of course, expect of Jake the type of courage and integrity that sustains Bigger's manhood in Native Son. But Jake has none of Bigger's virtues; he is the most despicable person imaginable. True, Jake is boxed in by circumstance, but this is true of a white postal worker or any other worker in an industrial society. Since Jake's story takes place in the depression years, he is lucky to have a job, and yet he habitually beats his sickly wife, gambles, and drinks. He becomes a perennial bitcher, embittered by his sexual frustration. The central meaning of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy comes from the economic and social forces that overpower Clyde Griffiths and finally negate his aspirations; Clyde is a victim of the American dream. But such meaning does not derive from Jake's story.

There are other reasons for Jake's frustrations. At the outset of the story Jake is an extremely jealous husband, but not because Lil, his wife, is carrying on with the milkman, as Jake claims. She is in fact unable to perform sex with anyone because of the earlier abortion forced by Jake. Now she suffers from a tumor, and Jake's anxiety heightens. None of these events, however, is enumerated in a naturalistic fashion. Instead Wright concentrates on a dream Jake has so that his initial action can be reasonably accounted for.¹⁰ The book begins with Jake's awaking from an erotic dream in which he is climbing a long winding stairway and hearing the voice of his boss from the top. It is significant that Jake is fully awakened by the arrival of the milkman. “His loin,” Wright interprets, “felt heavy and exhausted. He closed his eyes and his mind groped, thinking, What was I dreaming? He remembered being on the very brink of something, on the verge of a deep joy.”¹¹ It is also significant that Jake's boss appears in this dream and harasses him. Jake battles with life on two fronts: he is socially oppressed as a worker as well as sexually unfulfilled as a husband. Admittedly any dream is unreal and often a medley, but adding a social theme to an already overloaded sexual image is superfluous at best. Such a strategy, so apparent from the beginning, is an example of Wright's failure to integrate the social ideas of the novel into the narrative at hand.

If social determinism cannot fully account for the life of a central character as in Lawd Today, a naturalist writer often endows his hero with free will and self-assertion. The immediate model for this is Wright's own Native Son. Before committing his crime, Bigger, like Jake, is presented as an uneducated, uninformed individual; unlike Jake, however, Bigger is portrayed as a victim of white society who grew up in the worst black ghetto of the nation. It is thus surprising that Bigger gains identity after the murder. The crime gives him some awareness of himself and of the world in which he has never been capable before. Jake, on the other hand, has as much propensity for violence as Bigger but no capacity for growth and development. If Jake can be invested with any worthy traits, he is given only pretense and loquacity. The only commitment he ever makes in his life is to assert his manhood by uttering obscenities, abusing his wife, and goading her into stabbing him.

The lack of free will in Jake is best seen in his attitude toward the problem of race. Early in the story Jake bitterly complains of the fix he is in: he must pay Lil's doctor ＄500. Even though he might be able to borrow the money, he is forced to pay an exorbitant amount of interest. “Then,” he thinks to himself, “there were other bills: the furniture bill and the rent bill and the gas bill and the light bill and the bill at the Boston Store and the insurance bill and the milk bill” (p. 21). For all this family misfortune, he blames racism rather than capitalism. Jake has a gift of language and laconically says, “what in the world can a man do? I'm just like a slave” (pp. 20-21). The question he raises is legitimate enough, but the answer he gives in a metaphor is a non sequitur. No one doubts the relation between the question and the answer, but in the context of this scene the author has done away with the bridge between the economic forces and the plight of an individual. Consequently, for the reader Jake seems a bigot and ignoramus. He looks down upon Communists, Jews, Italians, Hungarians, Mexicans, Chinese, even some blacks. It may well be true that in a multiracial and political society a minority has a tendency to despise another minority, but the problem with Jake is that his attitude is not derived from his thinking.

Jake's inability to think for himself results in the way the narrative is structured. In “Squirrel Cage,” the middle section of the story, Wright interprets Jake's mind, saying “he definitely preferred the company of his own color; they understood him and he understood them” (pp. 104-05). Wright's observation here is accurate and also conforms to Jake's own conception of himself. But before this observation is made, Wright provides a scene in which clerks are working in the huge post office. Rather than letting Jake see the situation himself, Wright makes an interjection:

Tables began to rattle from the thud of cards being whacked down. Hoarse shouts cut through the smoky air. Though there were no written rules of segregation, it was generally assumed that Negroes would occupy one end of the canteen and whites the other. However, if a mixture was found nothing was said. But Jake always felt that he wanted to sit with his own race because he did not know the whites so well.

(p. 103)

The fact pointed out by the author indicates that segregation is not really a problem for Jake or any other black postal worker, or at least as serious a disadvantage as Jake thinks it is. This narrative pattern illustrates Jake's limitations in observation and judgment. Jake is too ignorant to realize that the white workers are really prejudiced, though they might not show it in their actions. Wright's presentation of detail is so selective that a man like Jake is incapable of observation, let alone self-determination.

Unlike Wright's self-made men, such as Bigger Thomas, Cross Damon, and Fishbelly Tucker, Jake Jackson hardly generates sympathy from the reader. Although he is not capable of reasoning, he is capable of deceiving others. He approves of graft as a way of life for anyone to get ahead; he admires people who can profit by accepting bribes. He even envies gangsters who can wield their power to intimidate the strong and the weak alike. Jealousy over woman is the only emotion that influences his thought and action. He hates Germans during the war because in his eyes they are beasts and rapists of French women.

Ironically, he does not realize that his own behavior smacks of the best. From the beginning of the story Jake is described in terms of animal temperament, a version of atavism of which Frank Norris makes so much in McTeague. Jake's animalism is provoked by Lil's stubbornness as McTeague's brutality is triggered by Trina's parsimony. Even when Jake is calm he resembles an ape in a cage that runs “his fingers through his hair, scratching an itchy scalp” (p. 12). No wonder when he was angered by Lil moments later, “Jake gripped her arm, digging long nails into her flesh” (p. 14). Only after Lil submits herself to his beating does he return to the posture of a relaxed animal. If he wins a row with her, he invariably begins to have a dream in which he is basking in the warm sun. “He stirred restlessly,” says Wright, “and his shoulders twitched as though he were a child nestling deeper into a mother's bosom” (p. 35). As long as Jake remains an animal in the forest he gives no one harm, but he is a menace to human society. McTeague, by contrast, is an amiable animal. One feels sorry for him because his misfortune is accidental; after all he has strived to have a good job and a good wife, the twin goals of his life. But few would feel compassion for a man like Jake. Calling Lawd Today “devoid of any unified relevance,” a black reader notes that it is the only Wright book in which the white man or society is not made the villain.¹²

That Jake is made a villain instead of a hero not only makes this novel unique in Wright's fiction but partly explains its failure. One of the most important requirements for a successful novel in the tradition of American literary Naturalism is that it create tensions in the life of the protagonist. These tensions grow out of an environment over which he has no control and about which he understands very little and, therefore, by which he is victimized. Even though a Naturalistic character is unable to control the forces outside of him, he is compelled to act and wage a battle with them, thereby creating tensions. One cannot expect heroism from Jake, but in the absence of any action, let alone a challenge against the forces, his story must be a dull one.

Wright is, thus, least concerned with the forces in society which man must battle for survival. Most Naturalist writers are clearly pessimistic determinists who observe that man is destroyed either by competition or submission. And his fate is often death. Native Son stands at the opposite end of this human struggle, for Bigger is victorious over the brutal facts of experience. True, Bigger is condemned to die as a murderer, but this defeat is really a triumph for him, who has rejected society's rules and values and established his own. James Farrell's Studs Lonigan is a story in which defeat comes after a long, fierce struggle. Dreiser's An American Tragedy stands between defeat and triumph. If Naturalism deals with the tension between will and determinism, Dreiser is content to keep the tension unresolved. Despite Clyde's destruction in the end, Dreiser refuses to indict life. Instead he has tenaciously sought its beauty and avoided its ugliness. Compared with these novels, Lawd Today glaringly falls short of their power and interest, for neither does the protagonist participate in a battle of life nor does the author seek life's beauty and exaltation.

The failure in Wright's experiment in Naturalism does not necessarily mean that Lawd Today is a failure as a novel. Within the confines of one day, one place, and one person of mediocre, if not inferior, mentality, a great deal happens and the story is filled with meaning. Of Native Son, James Baldwin has said that it is “the most powerful and celebrated statement we have yet had of what it means to be a Negro in America.”¹³ If Baldwin is right, Lawd Today is perhaps the most satiric and the least celebrated statement made of what it means to be black. Most significantly, however, Wright's satire is not only aimed at black life but, as a white critic points out, “it also, insidiously, provides glimpses into what it means to be white, colorless, ubiquitous.”¹⁴ One cannot laugh at a man like Bigger who has so much dignity, nor can one belittle a man like Cross Damon who has so much intellect.

Above all, Jake is an average man, black or white, who is trying in his own way but always erring. He is used as a symbol, a satire of such a man. As a satire Lawd Today is full of cynicism and sarcasm, but Wright's remarks are rarely as bitter as those in Native Son are. By no means can Lawd Today be construed as a protest novel, but his attack on society is made with subtlety. This is why, as Russell Brignano has observed, “although the protest is muted in Lawd Today by his reportorial and journalistic technique, it is implanted within the author's selection of his subject matter.”¹⁵

Wright's skill is at his best with a scene in which he reigns as an impartial judge on racial issues. Neither a black nor a white point of view influences his vision; fact alone makes his judgment. Under the clamor of the crowd his voice, though quiet, carries the weight of a decree. At the end of “Part One: Commonplace,” Jake and his friends walk reluctantly toward the post office for a tedious night shift. They eagerly watch a pompous parade of the Allied Imperial African War Councils in which ancient African generals are advocating the power and solidarity of blacks throughout the world. Jake and his friends are impressed not only by the show but by what blacks can do, just as Bigger in Native Son is proud of the abilities of Germans, Japanese, and Italians, who have conquered other lands. Though Jake and his comrades are convinced of the abilities of Africans, Asians, and Europeans, they are painfully reminded of the limitations imposed on them in this continent. This scene is immediately followed by a brief scene in which they gaze lasciviously at the carelessly exposed thighs of a white woman sitting obliquely across the aisle on a train. The taboo of interracial sex is defined in a quatrain improvised alternately by Jake and his three companions:

Finally, Jake rolled his eyes heavenward and sang in an undertone:

“Oh, Lawd, can I ever, can I ever? …”

Bob screwed up his eyes, shook his head, and answered ruefully:

“Naw, nigger, you can never, you can never. …”

Slim sat bolt upright, smiled, and countered hopefully:

“But wherever there's life there's hope. …”

Al dropped his head, frowned, and finished mournfully:

“And wherever there's trees there's rope.”

(pp. 96-97)

Another important technique in Wright's satire is irony.¹⁶ Jake's day abruptly begins as he is awakened by a loud radio broadcast announcing that it is February 12, 1936, Abraham Lincoln's birthday: “My Dear Friends, our flag is flying high today in honor of one of our greatest Americans, a man who saved his country and bestowed the blessings of liberty and freedom upon millions of his fellow men!” (p. 8). But Jake feels as though he is abandoned in “a vast Sargasso Sea—a prodigious welter of unconscious life, swept by groundswells of half conscious emotion” (p. 7). The irony sets the tone of the entire book. Jake and his black friends often dream of their good old days in the South where they used to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the quietude of the pastoral. They swam in the creek, caught catfish, and smelled the Magnolia trees. It is ironic that they were not accepted where they were able to live in harmony with nature. It is doubly ironic that blacks in the North are physically free but mentally restless.

Jake is aware that he and other blacks in the North are victims of racial strife, but he is not aware that they are victims of capitalism and money worship. He venerates gangsters because “it takes nerve to be a gangster! But they have a plenty of fun. Always got a flock of gals hanging on their arms. Dress swell in sporty clothes. Drive them long, sleek automobiles. And got money to throw away” (p. 30). Jake emulates them by loading his closet with plenty of fancy suits. While Jake and his friends watch a sidewalk medicine show, one of them says, “a man must make a lot of money in a business like that” (p. 88). Since selling Universal Herb Cureal Medicine is profitable, they reason, it must be good. “I'm going to make Lil take some of that,” says Jake, who believes that the quack medicine “might save her from that operation.” He is not really concerned whether or not it will cure Lil's tumor; he is merely concerned about saving money.

Wright's irony is direct and least subtle when it is used in dialogue. Duplicity in Jake's personality is most revealing when he desperately tries to save his job. In order to have his job in the post office reinstated, he blatantly lies to his supervisor:

Mister Swanson, I'm a black man. You can see my skin. I loves my race. I'm proud to be black. I wouldn't do nothing on earth to drag my race down. I ain't the kind of a man what would beat his wife and stand here before you white gentlemens. …

(p. 110)

Jake says “I love my race,” but he does not. He says “I'm proud to be black” but in fact he is ashamed to be black; he spends hours straightening his hair. He says “I wouldn't do nothing on earth to drag my race down,” but he would indeed do anything to get money and women. He says “I ain't the kind of a man what would beat his wife …” but he makes a daily ritual out of beating poor Lil. Jake calls his superiors “you white gentlemens,” but behind their backs he calls them “you white bastards.”

While irony is a dominant form of Wright's satire, sarcasm and cynicism are dominant elements in Lawd Today. They occur most frequently in “Squirrel Cage,” in which the author seldom intrudes into the dialogue so that the black men may speak their minds without interruptions. The book characteristically becomes a satire rather than a disguised protest novel, for the author does not protest at all. His characters attack every ethnic, social, and economic group of Americans; in so doing they are releasing their pent-up emotions and frustrations. To blacks, Jews mistreat them because they suspect Jews were mistreated by Europeans. Catholics accuse blacks of raping their women, since “the South's sure hard” (p. 156) on Catholics. Although Jake envies and respects anyone who has money, he hates professionals. He recalls his success in finding Lil an abortionist and reflects that such a doctor has no integrity since he takes advantage of poor workers: “It cost me five hundred iron men. … Boy, them quacks'll gut you if you let 'em. Quacks and mouthpieces get all a postal clerk's money. Abortions and divorces. … But Lawd!” (pp. 133-34). What is interesting is that their views are white, middle-class views.

There are other comments that are directed toward whites and are distinctly their own. The rich Southern whites, despite their wealth and power, are cowards in the eyes of the blacks: “The Reds sure scared them white folks down South where they put up that fight for the Scottsboro boys” (p. 152). Moreover, their hatred of the white race is so deeply ingrained in their minds that they can scarcely conceive of white blood in the Communists. Noticing that Lenin's eyes are narrow and slanted, one of them remarks, “I'll bet you when they find out about 'im they'll find he had some Chink blood in 'im” (p. 151). In particular, they loathe white men who exploit black women sexually. Since they cannot retaliate by exploiting white women, those black women invariably become the target of their attack. “Yeah,” Jake says with exasperation, “let a nigger woman make fifty dollars a week and she begins to think she's too good for her own race. … It just makes my blood boil to see a nigger woman grinning at a white man like they do. And these white man around here don't give a good Gawddamn about us. We'll just be clerks as long as we stay here, but they's got a chance to rise as high as a man can go …” (pp. 121-22).

What they call “Crackers, Rednecks, Hillbillies,” their arch-rivals over livelihood, are, they are convinced, “the ones what lynch and burn us” (p. 153). They think that rich whites in the South are less offensive than poor whites because the rich have no economic woes. The poor whites thus resent the blacks: “They grudge you the ground you stand on” (p. 153). Small wonder the description of whites that Jake and his friends give is the harshest and, from their point of view, the most accurate portrayal they ever make:

“And don't they look awful. …”

“… with them old bleached-out blue eyes. …”

“… sunk way back in their heads. …”

“… and that old dead stringy hair. …”

“… falling down over their faces. …”

“… like a dirty mop. …”

“… and them old thin mouths all drawed in. …”

“… and when they talk they whine through their noses. …”

“… like starved cats!”

(p. 153)

One reason for making Lawd Today a social criticism is the width and impartiality of Wright's satiric vision. Such a derogatory depiction of white features is matched with an equally disparaging view of black features. Wright describes Jake as he wakes up in the morning:

He stood up, fronting the mirror. The reflection showed a face round as a full moon and dark as a starless midnight. In an oily expanse of blackness were set two cunning eyes under which hung flabby pouches. A broad nose squatted fat and soft, its two holes gaping militantly frontward like the barrels of a shotgun. Lips were full, moist, and drooped loosely, trembling when he walked. A soft roll of fat seeped out of his neck, buttressing his chin. Shaggy sideburns frizzled each temple.

(p. 12)

Jake and the three black men also function in the novel as social critics. While they praise whites for their industriousness and system, commenting that they are “together like a army,” they grieve over a chronic black attitude: “If three niggers is trying to do something, one of 'em's going to trip the others up. …” One of Jake's associates interjects a quatrain: “Niggers is evil / White folks too / So glad I'm a Chinaman / I don't know what to do …” (p. 144). In their view, whites are Machiavellian, blacks are “sellouts,” and “yellows” do not count.

The fact that Wright was an active member of the Communist Party at the time of writing Lawd Today gives a special significance to whatever views Jake and his comrades express on politics. Wright's view on American capitalism is explicitly stated throughout the book: the rich always exploit the poor; race, politics, and everything else in the United States are part of the system. Jake thus condones bribery and corruption as a capitalistic way of life. Money sometimes transcends the color lines; Jake, for example, stands in awe of Doc, a black “precinct captain. A businessman. A property owner. He's got pull with all the big politicians down in the Loop” (p. 54). Even before this scene, one of Jake's comments is that “cold, hard cash runs this country, always did and always will” (p. 28). Although Wright is critical of capitalism, he is also critical of communism. Jake says of the Communists:¹⁷ “Now them guys, them Commoonists and Bolshehicks, is the craziest guys going! They don't know what they want. They done come 'way over here and wants to tell us how to run our country when their own country ain't run right” (p. 32).

However selfish and materialistic Jake may sound, his comments reflect Wright's unwavering emphasis on American life: the independent spirit of individuals. Wright thus chides whites who “rush about like bees. Yeah, but ain't no use of a black man rushing. Naw, 'cause we ain't going nowhere. … We just as well take it easy and have some fun” (p. 103). Wright's critical attitude toward both communism and capitalism is abundantly clear. Wright himself, through Jake, expresses his belief in the independence of the mind. Yet black Americans are only free within limits. Within these limits, the black American defines himself. Wright defines Jake and, in so doing, transcends the mold.

Lawd Today can be interpreted as either a Naturalistic novel or a satire. A Naturalistic interpretation will be concerned with Jake's character in the light of the society in which he lives. A reading of the novel as satire may deal with the fashion in which the social and personal ills are exposed and ridiculed. Throughout the story the focus is on American society, but there is an ambiguity in Wright's treatment of the protagonist. In “Part One: Commonplace” and “Part Three: Rats' Alley,” Jake appears as the protagonist as the narrative proceeds; however, in “Part Two: Squirrel Cage” in particular, Jake is used as a symbol. In this part of the story Wright constructs the dialogue among Jake and the black characters without, in most cases, distinguishing the speakers. As a result, the men are cut into a single character with one voice as if in a proletarian pluralistic novel.

But the problem with this device is that Lawd Today is not a proletarian novel. Nor is it a novel of any political persuasion. Needless to say, there is every sign that Jake is a Naturalistic character; he is examined in terms of the social and economic forces over which he has little control. A Naturalistic writer, however, cannot make a story out of a character who largely disappears in the midst of the experiment. It is irrelevant whether a Naturalist ought to place emphasis on the forces of circumstance, as Zola does in a novel like L'Assomoir, or on the actions of his hero, as Wright himself does in Native Son. In any event, the focus of his attention must necessarily be upon the interactions between will and determinism.

Wright's presentation of Jake's day, though comprehensive, is metaphorical. A literary Naturalist establishes a milieu taken from life and, into it, projects characters to prove the process of a social phenomenon. What underlies the narrative in such a novel is the author's constant reminder for readers to form their own reflections. In Lawd Today, Wright allows readers as little interruption of the action as possible. Unlike Dreiser's Naturalistic novel, Wright's has a severely limited time frame and only an occasional pause to indicate a transition or change of scene. By the time Jake stumbles into bed drunk and allows Lil to cut him down, readers have all forgotten about her. Her final action, however understandable, precipitates as if in a gothic tale. Before Roberta's murder, in An American Tragedy, which occurs at the end of Book II, Dreiser provides a comprehensive background of Clyde's life: his relationship with his family, including his sister Esta, who has been deserted by her lover, with all his friends and associates, and with all the girls he has attempted to allure. In Wright's novel, on the other hand, readers have no such recourse to detail.

There is no question that Lawd Today is a successful attempt at satire, particularly in “Squirrel Cage.” Wright is completely impartial in treating his material. If Jake is a caricature, he is a caricature of not only black men but white men and any ordinary men and women in urban society. Wright's novel is at its best in Part II before Jake and the black characters descend into the brothel, as Huckleberry Finn is in the middle chapters before Tom returns to make Huck's story a travesty. The middle section of Lawd Today provides the four black men with a full range of social, economic, and political commentary with no other characters intruding into their vision. These four are the funniest of all the Wright characters, for they have no inhibitions of any kind, no conflicts of interest with society. Their views are almost as candid as Huck Finn's.

The central question to be asked about Lawd Today is whether Wright has succeeded in combining his two experiments. Granted, the tragic death of a hero, whether it is in Native Son or An American Tragedy, is no laughing matter. But in both novels there are significant elements of satire that suggest the crimes they dramatize are inevitable products of American society and that both protagonists are morally free from guilt. In Lawd Today the elements of humor and sarcasm are so dominant that the idea of reform, which underlies a satire, is minimized. Wright has no intention of reforming Jake or society at large; indeed Jake is an average man and his foibles are those of human nature. Wright knew them deeply and succeeded in letting the reader witness them. It is true that serious satire and light humor are harmoniously wed in Huckleberry Finn, but it is basically an initiation story, not a Naturalistic one. It seems difficult for any writer to mix satire and Naturalism as equal bases for a novel and accomplish both ends. Such an experiment, however possible it may be, has no precedent, and Lawd Today, despite its merits, is a failure in that respect.

Notes

1. Granville Hicks, “Dreiser to Farrell to Wright,” SatR, 46 (March 30, 1963), 37-38.

2. Baldwin believed that Wright's characterization of Bigger is marred by a paucity of feeling the protagonist has for his fellow human beings. For Baldwin, though Wright records black anger as no writer before him had done, the expression of anger is also the overwhelming limitation of Native Son. What is sacrificed, according to Baldwin, is a necessary dimension to the novel: “The relationship that Negroes bear to one another, that depth of involvement and unspoken recognition of shared experience which creates a way of life. … It is this climate, common to most Negro protest novels, which has led us all to believe that in Negro life there exists no tradition, no field of manners, no possibility of ritual or intercourse, such as may, for example, sustain the Jew even after he has left his father's house.” See James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), pp. 35-36.

3. James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dial Press, 1961), p. 187. Although this response specifically refers to “The Man Who Lived Underground,” Baldwin also seems to have in mind Cross Damon in The Outsider (1953), whose prototype is Jake Jackson: Cross begins as an uneducated frustrated worker in the Chicago post office exactly as Jake does.

4. See Nick Aaron Ford, “The Fire Next Time?: A Critical Survey of Belles Lettres by and about Negroes Published in 1963,” Phylon, 25 (Summer, 1964), 129-30. Lewis Gannett, in the New York Herald Tribune Books (May 5, 1963), p. 10, thought that the novel lacks the tension of Native Son because of the monotonously overdrawn dialogue and the absence of overtones.

5. See Edward Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 90-92.

6. See Keneth Kinnamon, “The Pastoral Impulse in Richard Wright,” MASJ, 10 (Spring, 1969), 41-47; “Lawd Today: Richard Wright's Apprentice Novel,” Studies in Black Literature, 2 (Summer, 1971), 16-18.

7. See Michel Fabre, The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright (New York: Morrow, 1973), pp. 78-79.

8. Fabre, p. 111.

9. While Native Son contains no specific literary allusions, some critics have noted Wright's conscious effort to create artistic images. James Nagel, for instance, observes that the novel is not only a solid sociological study of the Negro's life in the United States, but a work of art that “transcends the limitations of sociological prose.” The most significant artistic element is Wright's use of the imagery of blindness. See James Nagel, “Images of ‘Vision’ in Native Son,” University Review, 36 (December, 1969), 109-15.

10. How Wright became acquainted with Freudian psychology is unknown. In discussing Lawd Today Keneth Kinnamon cites The Interpretation of Dreams, in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. A. A. Brill (New York: Modern Library, 1938). See Kinnamon, “Lawd Today: Richard Wright's Apprentice Novel,” p. 18. Another possible source is Farrell. It is generally agreed among critics that Wright, as Granville Hicks has observed, “could scarcely have failed to be influenced by James T. Farrell, who was just beginning to have a strong effect on American fiction. As Farrell had learned something about documentation from Dreiser, so Wright had learned from Farrell” (Hicks, pp. 37-38). Farrell had commented as early as 1943 on the relationship between Naturalism and Freudianism in connection with Dreiser: “He [Dreiser] accepted as science generalizations based on the ideas of nineteenth-century materialism. In The Financier and The Titan this biologic determinism is usually explained by the word ‘chemisms.’ Paradoxically enough, Dreiser's appeal to ‘chemisms’ is made quite frequently in specific contexts concerning motivations of characters, where we can now see that the real rationale of these motivations can be most satisfactorily explained by Freudianism.” See Farrell, The League of Frightened Philistines (New York: Vanguard, 1945), pp. 13-14n.

11. Lawd Today (New York: Walker, 1963), p. 10. Subsequent page references are to this edition and incorporated into the text.

12. Ford, pp. 129-30.

13. Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, p. 23.

14. Lewis Leary, “Lawd Today: Notes on Richard Wright's first/last Novel,” CLA Journal, 15 (June, 1972), 412.

15. Russell Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Man and His Works (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1970), p. 28.

16. Lewis Leary maintains that Wright's humor in Lawd Today is not “tainted with irony. It is genuine, as Mark Twain's at his best is genuine, with bitterness showing through but not intruding.” See Leary, p. 419.

17. Edward Margolies argues that Wright did not publish Lawd Today because it would be interpreted as anti-communistic, and that he kept it with him in the hope that in the event he would leave the Communist Party, he would be able to publish it. See Margolies, pp. 91-92.