[J m HofMarN]

I'm sure this will sound odd coming from me but I hated Native Son. Don't get me wrong I'm sure Mr. Wright is a good author to have created such a horror of a character but I cant read a book wherein I hate the main character. Bigger had not one redeaming quality. In fact this book (despite being written by an African American) portrayed black people as a whole in a rather unflattering light. The only people we really meet at length are Bigger and his friends who are a gang of thugs, except for one of them who actually does seem to think about things and have dreams and is then never seen again.

Bigger has virtually no relationship with his family and they're not portrayed very kidnly either. There are no domestic details that might endear them to us. The sole characters I liked were Jan Erlone and his girlfriend but Bigger murders her and stuffs her body in a furnace. I didn't read far enough to get to the part where Bigger kills his own girlfriend and goes to trial. Maybe I'm missing the part of the novel that's really meaningful, I don't know. But the murder of two women and the sexual assault of one by a character with no redeaming qualities is just not good reading material to me.

In my opinion "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac does more to foster understanding between races than "Native Son"

This post has been edited by J m HofMarN: 13 January 2005 - 01:40 PM

[SimeSublime]

I haven't even heard of this book before, but I'm guessing it's not as socially relevent over here. But I agree about not reading a book due to unlikable characters. Regardless of the fact that I liked all her previous books, Sarah Douglas's "The Troy Game" just bored me. I really couldn't care less if all the characters just died.