SOURCE: Bryant, Jerry H. “Richard Wright and Bigger Thomas: Grace in Damnation.” In Victims and Heroes: Racial Violence in the African American Novel, pp. 197-210. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1997.
In the following excerpt, Bryant discusses violence and racism in Richard Wright's Native Son, noting that the novel's protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is the first Black character in American literature to substitute his own value system for one given him by white society.
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