African American Lit Blog

One discussion that we had in class that I found particularly interesting was the debate about weather or not Dr. Bledsoe is a sellout to his race. We talked about it after reading the passage where the Narrator sees Dr. Bledsoe raise and lower his mask in front of Mr. Norton. Most people in our class agreed that Dr. Bledsoe was a sellout but I disagreed with that idea at the time of the discussion. Apart from the following passage “I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am,” I felt that, while Dr. Bledsoe acted poorly, he was in no way a sellout (Ellison 143). I would define a sellout to be someone who actively puts down other black people for their own gain. I think of someone like Daniel Cameron , the attorney general of Kentucky, when I think of a sellout, but I wasn’t ready to brand Dr. Bledsoe one.        When we discussed this passage, I saw Dr. Bledsoe as someone who manipulated the system for his own gain. Howeve

The level that Richard Wright describes and forms his characters is, in my opinion, a big indicator of the purpose of his book. Native Son is a protest novel with specific goals which relate to what it is protesting. Wright wanted to show the flaws of the American System and how it affected black people. He wanted to reach lots of people and share his message, his goal was neither artistry nor character depth. Bigger’s purpose in Native Son was to serve as a reflection of his environment, not to be a full character or person. He shows enough of Bigger so that we can understand him but Bigger never really grows and changes as a character. Wright wants to show what happens to a person if they’re put under such harsh conditions. Bigger changes as the system affects him more since he acts as a mirror.        While Richard Wright’s characters are simplistic reflections of their environments, I wouldn’t necessarily call that a bad thing. His goal was to prove a point and make a statement.