Native Son
Native Son (German title son of this country ) is a novel by Richard Wright published in 1940 , which is to be understood with its combination of autobiographical elements and the emphasis on the constraints of social milieus in the tradition of the American socially critical novel of the 1920s and 1930s. Together with Black Boy and Uncle Tom's Children , he is considered the outstanding opus of the black writer. It shows how a person is harassed by a society that is marked by hatred and prejudice. The first unabridged edition appeared in the USA in 1993.
content
The main character is Bigger Thomas, a black man from a Chicago slum . He denies his life with the help of his instincts: Bigger Thomas lives in constant fear, distrusts everyone and feels great hatred.
He finds work as a chauffeur for the Dalton family. In a patriarchal way, she is friendly to black people. Mary, the exalted, egalitarian daughter of the house, escalates . She asks Bigger Thomas to accompany her and her boyfriend when they go out, then he has to bring the drunk Mary to her room. When her blind mother, awakened by noises, comes into her room to check on her, Bigger Thomas is seized with fear. Fearing that this situation will be misunderstood, he tries - shaped by a life that has always consisted of fear and violence - to silence Mary and accidentally suffocates her. When his girlfriend Bessie tries to convince him to surrender, he also kills her.
A chase begins over Chicago's rooftops. But Bigger Thomas can be arrested. He escapes lynching , but is eventually sentenced to death by the court through Judge Buckley, who is hoping for re-election .
Only Bigger Thomas' lawyer, the communist Max, is able to overcome the boundaries frozen by hatred on all sides . He tries to show that there is a close connection between the act and social pressures. His commitment ultimately leads to a cordial relationship between lawyer and client and, with Bigger Thomas, to the beginning of realizing his own guilt; his hatred of all whites is beginning to dissolve.
Wright's concern is to show that one can escape supposed social regulations through personal commitment. People's personal contribution is a prerequisite for getting out of anonymity.
Translations
In 1941 a translation into German by Klaus Lambrecht appeared for the first time in Zurich's Humanitas Verlag under the title Son of this Land , which was reprinted in 1969 and 1970 by Diana Verlag in Switzerland. Interestingly, Lambrecht's German translation was also published in 1969 in the then German Democratic Republic as a licensed edition by the (East) Berlin publishing house Volk und Welt and again in 1970 in the book club 65 series by the Neues Leben publishing house.
In 1993 a new translation by Kurt Heinrich Hansen under the title Native son · Son of this Land was published as a paperback by Droemer Knaur Verlag in Munich . In 2019, a revised new edition of Lambrecht's translation was published by Kein & Aber .
drama
On March 24, 1941, a drama version of the material was premiered.
Film adaptations
Native Son has been filmed three times to date.
Pierre Chenal directed the European black and white production Native Son in 1951 . Most notable about this film adaptation is that Richard Wright himself plays the title character, Bigger Thomas.
The 1986 film adaptation, directed by Jerrold Freedman , featured actors like Victor Love as Bigger Thomas, Matt Dillon, Elizabeth McGovern, Oprah Winfrey or David Rasche much more prominently. Especially in technical terms, it was more convincing than European production.
Another film adaptation followed in 2019 with Native Son .
reception
The scope and intensity of the literary critical examination of the novel reflects the importance of this novel for the serious American literature of the 20th century, whereby the scale of judgments ranges from violent polemics to exuberant praise. As Franzbecker explains in detail in his account of the literary history of the reception of the work, both the message of the novel and the development, behavior and motives of the protagonist Bigger Thomas are interpreted and assessed in completely different ways.
Reading Native Son is a major conflict in American History X between Derek Vinyard and his father Dennis. Derek reads the novel his father condemns at school. In the context of the film, the director Kaye asks the question to what extent the milieu determines a life. Kaye's thesis emerges that racists like Derek (in a certain phase of life) and his father fail to recognize the determination of the milieu, while figures like Davina Vinyard and Murray, who are portrayed as democrats, recognize precisely this. With this assessment, violence by the marginalized represents at least as much a social task as the guilt of the individual. With this positioning, Kaye moves close to the basic idea of Wright's novel.
expenditure
- Richard Wright: Native Son. The restored text established by the Library of America . With an introduction by Arnold Rampersad. HarperCollins , New York 2005, ISBN 978-0-06-083756-3
- Richard Wright: Native Son. Son of this country . From the American by Kurt Heinrich Hansen. Droemer Knaur , Munich 1993, ISBN 978-3-426-01597-1
- Richard Wright: Son of this country: novel , from the American by Klaus Lambrecht, supplemented and revised by Yamin von Rauch, Kein und Aber, Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-0369-5795-1 .
literature
- Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, ISBN 3-534-07366-5 , pp. 26-42.
- Martha C. Nussbaum : Political Emotions. Why love is important for justice. (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 2172). Suhrkamp, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-518-29772-8 , pp. 437-442.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See the bibliographical information on WorldCat : Son of this country, roman [sic ]. Retrieved October 24, 2013.
- ↑ Richard Wright: Native son · Son of this country. From the American. by Kurt Heinrich Hansen. Droemer Knaur Verlag, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-426-01597-8 .
- ↑ Thomas David: An American Tragedy. Review in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 13, 2019, p. 16.
- ↑ Cf. in detail the description and evidence by Rolf Franzbecker (with the collaboration of Peter Bruck and Willi Real): The modern novel of the American Negro, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1979, ISBN 3-534-07366-5 , pp. 26-43.