우연과 필연의 변증법과 R. 라이트의 『미국의 아들』: 서사의 동력과 한계에 대해

Abstract

For many years, Native Son, one of Richard Wright’s major works, has been heavily attacked by some renowned literary critics because of its narrative inconsistency and thematic ambiguity, not to mention its graphic violence and suspected misogyny. Especially in “Fate,” the last section of the novel, the driving force of its narrative is weakening gradually amid its philosophical meditations and political manifestation, which leads eventually to its narrative inconsistency and thematic ambiguity. In this respect, many critics have attempted to explain these flaws in terms of Wright’s political leanings and philosophical confusion. In contrast to this consensus of the critics, this essay tries to figure out these deficiencies of the novel in terms of the dialectics between accident and necessity. The driving force of the narrative of Native Son comes from the dynamic interaction of the accidental events of Bigger Thomas, its protagonist, and the necessity of socio-historical forces in 1940s America in which the novel was born. By way of the dialectical confrontation between individual accidents and socio-historical necessities, the driving force of narrative in Native Son successfully portrays the totality of racial discrimination in the American society, as well as the existential meanings of Bigger’s life as a black man. However, from the last section of the novel, the dialectics of accident and necessity shatters into dogmatic discourses of politics and ambiguous monologues of philosophy, which results in undermining the driving force of the narrative in Native Son.