Native Son

by Richard Wright

buildings can’t unfold, can’t feed the dreams men have, men like you. . . . The men on the inside of those buildings have begun to doubt, just as you did. They don’t believe any more. They don’t feel it’s their world. They’re restless, like you, Bigger. They have nothing. There’s nothing through which they can grow and unfold. They go in the streets and they stand outside of those buildings and look and wonder. . . .” “B-b-but what they hate me for?” Bigger asked. “The men who own those buildings are afraid. They want to keep what they own, even if it makes others suffer. In order to keep it, they push men down in the mud and tell them that they are beasts. But men, men like you, get angry and fight to re-enter those buildings, to live again. Bigger, you killed. That was wrong. That was not the way to do it. It’s too late now for you to . . . work with . . . others who are t-trying to . . . believe and make the world live again. . . . But it’s not too late to believe what you felt, to understand what you felt. . . .”