Triangulated Narrative Patterns in Richard Wright’s Native Son and The Outsider: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Ideology

Naturalism and existentialism are two modes of representation that many twentieth-century American and European writers used. But whereas some novelists used each mode independently, others, such as the African-American writer Richard Wright, mixed both modes in the single novel for ideological reasons, thus making the novel’s narrative structure more dynamic. This paper explores both the naturalistic and existential modes of representation in two novels by Richard Wright, namely, Native Son and The Outsider. An analysis of these two novels together highlights the relationship between the author’s ideology and his narrative technique with greater clarity than if either novel were studied separately. The paper explains that the narrative pattern in both novels is inconsistent due to the author’s shift from one mode to the other. Wright starts both novels in the mode of naturalism, moves then to the mode of existentialism, and, finally, ends both novels in the mode of naturalism. The paper relates Wright’s shift to the mode of existentialism to the ideology and personality of the author himself. Richard Wright suffered from humiliation and slavery in the dominant society of white America and came to reflect on the oppression and poverty he suffered in both of his novels by using the naturalistic mode of representation. Thomas Bigger in Native Son and Damon Cross in The Outsider are represented at the outset as weak and controlled by social and economic forces which they can neither control nor understand. However, the author shifts toward the middle of each novel to the existential mode to portray his oppressed heroes—Thomas Bigger and Damon Cross—as powerful and violent figures who rebel against the moral values of the white American society. But Wright turns back again to the naturalistic mode of representation toward the ends of both novels rendering both characters as weak, especially when he describes their failure in their quest to find a meaning for their lives, a matter which suggests Wright’s frustrations regarding the realities of the experience of the African-American individual in the American society