Race, Rage, and Resistance: Deconstructing Social Injustice in Richard Wright’s Native Son

Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) ruins a defining protest novel that uncompromisingly representations the vicious machinery of systemic racism in America. This paper discovers the interrelated themes of race, rage, and resistance as they apparent through the life and psychological unscrambling of Bigger Thomas, the novel’s disastrous protagonist. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory, Frantz Fanon’s postcolonial psychology, and Naturalist literary philosophies, this study examines how Wright exposes racial domination not as individual prejudice but as a structural force that warps identity, distorts justice, and creates violence. The novel struggles unsophisticated moral binaries and instead paints a deeply uncomfortable portrait of a society complicit in creating the very monsters it fears. Through this critical lens, the paper argues that Native Son is not merely a story about crime, but a searing impeachment of a nation’s historical failure to confront its racial realities.