NIHILISM AND IMAGES OF REBELLION: A CRITICAL STUDY OF RICHARD WRIGHT'S NATIVE SON
Richard Wright (1908-1960) is one of the notable novelists of African-American literature. Native Son (1940) is one of his outstanding novels which received as a unique literary work of his time and still. Most of his writings call for liberation from the racial discrimination that African Americans experienced during the Great Depression (1929-1933) and beyond, notably in his novel of Native Son. This novel chronicles the poverty of a twenty year old black man called Bigger Thomas. It implicitly traces the gradual aspirations of Bigger to rebel against white prejudice. In this study, Nihilism is the scope of debate and Bigger with his surrounding is the range for that view of negation. Bigger exemplifies the revolted figure of his peers against marginality and nothingness. The present research is a critique to elaborate some of the tangible and intangible trajectories of rebellion pursued by Bigger Thomas. This treatise aims to reveal a sort of condemnation against apartheid and to cast the light on the resentment of Blacks for their nihilism. The images of rebellion shown in this research are to explain some of the psychological reactions when one is destined to be a subaltern. Consequently, rebellion identifies the hope of Blacks for which a release from the chains of being peripheral might be obtained. However, some images, as violence, are reversibly perceived to maintain rebellion out of a quagmire of nihilism.
Keywords: Bigger Thomas, Blacks, Identity, Liberation, Nihilism, Rebellion