In Native Son Wright shifted his focus from the South to the problems of urban blacks in the North, but his picture of a two-tiered society based on racial discrimination and the protection of property rights remained the same.

Although the racist thugs of Uncle Tom's Children are replaced by avaricious landlords, irresponsible journalists, and brutal police in Native Son, the slums of South Side Chicago, like the rural South portrayed in Uncle Tom's Children (1938), are places in which the dreams of success are available to all but the means to achieve them are restricted to the few.

The particular hardships of black residents of South Side Chicago are set against the background of the Great Depression, political corruption, wealthy capitalists, and urban blight.

Native Son explores the social unrest created by the hard economic times, particularly the interest in radical political solutions represented by Marxists...