perspective, so that his argument against racism is also an argument against the socioeconomic and political structures which promote racism. The book is built on the passion of protest and action which is meant to express the power of the individual in a society antagonistic to that individual. The fact that this protest and action might at times express itself in violence seems to be, to Wright, an inevitable aspect of the fight against racism. It is telling that in Native Son and in the basic tenets of communism, violence is, indeed, seen as a legitimate means of fighting injustice.
This theme of the struggle of the individual, especially the black individual, against forces of oppression, forms the heart and soul of most of Wright's writing and of his life. Through experience and education, Wright came to believe that merely doing away with racism would not solve the problems of blacks, even if it could be accomplished in reality. What was needed in the racist nation of the United States was a complete revolution in the structure of the socioeconomic system, replacing capitalism with communism, or at least Wright so idealistically believed, until the horrors of actual communism in Stalinist Russia came to be known.
In his autobiography Black Boy, Wright tells the story of his life growing up as a black boy and man in the racist atmosphere of the United States. He also issues a warning to blacks as well as whites about the damage done to all by racism, both victim and victimizer. However, as much as Wright believes the deeper answer to racial problems is radical political and economic change, he is not a polemicist or a theorist, at least not in his fiction. He is first and foremost a writer of stories about human beings, an artist, a visionary perhaps. For example, he does not deal with economic statistics, but rather with the human effects of poverty. He tries to change the heart of the reader by appealing to the reader's...