Native Son

Native Son Summary | Book 1 Summary

On the surface, Native Son tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a young man shackled by poverty and racism in 1930s Chicago, whose unintentional murder of a white woman and subsequent actions touch off a city-wide manhunt that leads to capture, conviction and the death sentence. Yet, the undercurrents deliver the real tale. The novel is more than a lurid action tale of murder and mayhem; it is a clarion call for a deeper understanding of how the failure to address the problems caused by years of systematic oppression can lead to bitter rebellion and desperate violence.

The first third of the novel begins in a squalid one-room apartment in the "Black Belt" of Chicago, a rat terrorizes where the family of four sharing cramped quarters. Bigger Thomas corners the creature behind a trunk, where it cowers briefly before hurtling from its hiding place and latching onto his leg. After running in circles looking for escape, the rat faces Bigger and rears up in defiance before once more running for cover. Bigger kills the beast with a skillet, then crushes the rat's head by pounding it with a shoe. When he taunts his sister Vera with the corpse and frightens her into a faint, his mother berates Bigger. She points out that if he had a job, they could afford better living conditions and warns him that if he doesn't mend his ways, he will end up on the gallows. She reminds him that he has a job interview with Mr. Dalton at 5:30, then tends to Vera, who worries that she will be late for the sewing classes she has been taking at the YWCA.

With an entire day before his meeting with his prospective employer, Bigger occupies himself first with thoughts about a plan that he and his friends have occasionally discussed - the idea of robbing Blum's Delicatessen. To him, the plan seems simple and foolproof, yet they have always demurred, since never before have they used a gun while stealing, nor have they ever robbed a white man. He and his friend, Gus, watch a plane skywriting an advertisement. Bigger reveals that, given a chance, he could fly a plane. The friends laugh bitterly, remarking that no white people would ever give Bigger such a chance. They play a game they call "white," in which they imagine conversations between haughty, privileged white people. Bigger angrily comments that white people don't live in the fancy part of town, but inside of him and every black person.

Gus, Bigger and two other friends, Jack and G.H., discuss the plan to rob Blum. Bigger calls Gus a coward for expressing doubts, but Gus says it is Bigger who is afraid - afraid that Gus will say "yes." Only Jack's intervention prevents Bigger from attacking Gus. Bigger and Jack go to the cinema, where first they watch a movie in which a rich, white woman takes a lover. The two are enthralled by the scenes of cocktail parties, golfing, swimming and exclusive nightclubs. In the movie, when Communists try to kill the millionaire husband, the wife returns to his side. Bigger and Jack discuss exactly what a "Red" is, finally deciding that Reds seem to be a violent race living in Russia. The second movie takes place in tribal Africa, with naked black men and women dancing to the wild beat of drums. Bigger stops paying attention, lost in a daydream, imagining that once he is working for the Daltons and surrounded by people of wealth, he can learn the secret to "getting hold of money."

Bigger realizes that he does not want to rob Blum's now that he is likely to get a job that could lead to money and success. When the friends meet in the pool hall, he attacks Gus without provocation, threatening him with a knife and humiliating him in front of the others. The owner, Doc, warns him to stop, so Bigger slashes the felt cover of the pool table. When the scuffle is over, Bigger announces that it is now too late to rob Blum's, as he has to go see about a job. Still carrying the gun he has retrieved from home to use in the robbery, he travels to the white neighborhood, where all his bravado and the images inspired by the movie dissipate, as he agonizes over whether he should knock on the back door or the front.

A white housekeeper admits him, and Bigger finds himself in an alien environment with welcoming chairs, indirect lighting and fine artwork on smooth white walls. Though angry and uncomfortable, when the white-haired Mr. Dalton greets him, he responds with excessive deference. He meets Mrs. Dalton, a blind woman who uses long words Bigger does not understand to explain to her husband why, according to the Relief Agency's report, Bigger should move in and begin work at once. Mr. Dalton asks about Bigger's past and his home life - we learn that Mr. Dalton's company owns the slums in which Bigger and his family live - then explains Bigger's duties as a chauffeur. Mary Dalton interrupts them. He hates the girl for her easy familiarity, thinking her talk of capitalists and trade unions will cost him his job. Mr. Dalton, however, takes Mary's inquisition in stride and explains to Bigger that he will hire him, even though Bigger has a reputation as a troublemaker, because Mr. Dalton supports the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

The housekeeper, Peggy, feeds him supper and explains that an additional duty of Bigger's will be to attend the furnace. On his way to get the car to drive Mary to the university, Bigger meets Mrs. Dalton in the kitchen; she expresses disappointment that Bigger shows no interest in furthering his education. He is startled by her apparent ability to "see" exactly where he is and what he is doing by the sounds he makes.

Mary has no intention of going to the university on this last night before she is to take an extended trip to Detroit. She asks Bigger to pick up her friend, Jan Erlone. As does Mary, Erlone addresses Bigger as an equal, asking to be called by his first name and shaking Bigger's hand. Rather than putting him at ease, this makes Bigger feel his blackness as a badge of shame. He forms a "dumb, cold, inarticulate hate" toward the white couple for their presumptions. Erlone and Mary get into the front seat of the car rather than the back, with the former driving, and Mary pressed up against Bigger. When they ask him to eat with them at Ernie's Kitchen Shack - "a place where colored people eat" - he considers stalking off, leaving the job behind, but he does not. At Ernie's, he encounters not only his friend Jack, but his own quasi-girlfriend, Bessie Mears.

The three drink beer and share a bottle of rum, while driving around the park as Erlone and Mary talk about Communism. Erlone hands Bigger some pamphlets before weaving drunkenly off to catch a train. When Bigger and Mary reach her home, she stumbles at the front steps. Realizing that she is unable to get to her room without waking the entire house, Bigger tries to guide her, but is reduced to carrying her up the stairs and laying her on her bed. There, he kisses her lightly and considers doing more. Just as he feels her body begin to respond, he hears a creak at the door.

Mrs. Dalton enters the room, calling Mary's name softly. Mary is mumbling incoherently and, afraid she will give his presence away, Bigger presses a pillow to her face to silence her for a moment. Mrs. Dalton smells liquor in the room and steps away, remonstrating her daughter for being "dead drunk" and leaving the room. Bigger realizes how narrowly he has escaped being caught in a white woman's bedroom. If Mary's father had been the one to enter, or if Mrs. Dalton were not blind, Bigger would surely have been caught. His relief is short-lived, however, when he discovers that in his attempt to keep Mary quiet, he accidentally suffocated her. She is dead.

The direness of his situation creeps over Bigger. First, he decides that he must disavow having been the last person to see her alive, and resolves to cast suspicion on Erlone. Recalling that he was to have carried Mary's traveling trunk to the station the next day, he sees a chance to both explain a reason for any fingerprints he may have left and a way to implicate Erlone. He realizes that by using the trunk to remove the body from the bedroom, he can make it appear that Mary has run off to Detroit as planned. He forces the body to fit in the small space and carries the trunk to the basement, where he is inspired to burn her body in the furnace and remove any proof that she is dead and not simply vanished. Under the accusing glare of the Daltons' ever-present white cat, Bigger shoves Mary's body into the furnace, only to find that it does not fit entirely inside. Using his knife and a nearby hatchet, he cuts off her head, shoves everything into the furnace, and sends a fresh load of coal into the fire. Finding Mary's purse on the ground near the car, he removes a wad of bills from inside and hurries home to the slums to sleep in the tiny, crowded room.