Native Son Research Paper

African American families living in the the South and North during the 1940s and 1950s faced many struggles, including racism, oppression, and poverty. One aspect that helped many people through this suffering is family. Family can be a source of support to get ones through tough times and influence how children view themselves, but is also can be the causes of suffering for others. In Richard Wright's book Native Son, Bigger, his mom and siblings live in utter poverty in Chicago, and try and stick together as a family to fight the oppression they face. However, without a strong father figure, Bigger is left to fend for himself, and gets taken by fear caused by racism and oppression. In The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Pecola Breedlove is heavily

All of the families are battling the same struggles of segregation and discrimination of the mid 1900s. Biggers family is by far the poorest of the three families, squeezing him, their mother and little siblings all into a tiny rat infested apartment into southside Chicago, living in utter poverty. Bigger acts as the head of the household because there is no father figure, which leads to an interesting family dynamic. Biggers mom wants him succeed but he gets sucked into the vicious crime circle and ends up in prison. This is because he has no sort of support system under him to and no role model that he can look up to. Even though Troy Maxson was a very unloving father, he still was a role model for Cory and taught him many good life lessons when growing up. The family dynamic of the Maxsons is very aggressive because Troy is a dominant male and Rose, his wife, is very submissive under him. Cory and her both try to stand up to him but they are unable to because they are more afraid of him than everything. Even though Rose is submissive to Troy, she is very protective of her family. Bono says “Some people build fences to keep people out and other people build fences to keep people in. Rose wants to hold on to you all. She loves you.” (Wilson). Most people think of a fence as keeping people in, but Rose builds the fence to keep her family in, a way to show love. Out of the three families, the Breedloves have worst family life, because the constant absence and abuse from their father Cholly Breedlove. He is very reckless and a person who is constantly putting his family in danger, but his violence is the way he shows his love. This quote that Claudia sums up the dynamic of the Cholly, saying “We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of