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When Invisible Man’s narrator retells the experiences of his past, the difference between the narrator’s current self and his past self is vast. The two of them have contrasting views of their life and aspirations. While the current narrator has discovered and accepted his “invisibility” as a black man in a racist society, in his retelling of his life, his past self does not realize his invisibility, and he believes he can make a change in the world. However, as the story progresses, the narrator starts to understand how the progress he believes himself to be making is not progress at all, but is exactly what is required of him to keep the oppressive society he lives in unchanged and balanced. In the first chapter of Invisible Man, after the narrator endures the nightmarish Battle Royale, he finally gets to read the speech he had come to the event for in the first place. In front of his town’s “leading white citizens,” he delivers his speech badly bruised and swallowing blood, still ho...

Richard Wright’s Native Son follows Bigger, a 20 year old black man living in poverty in Chicago. As Bigger is thrown into a flurry of new circumstances, Wright intricately depicts Bigger’s thoughts in real time, and as readers, we see the rationale behind Bigger’s decisions and personality. Though Bigger commits serious crimes, he still is a humanized, complex, and understandable character, due to the oppression and discrimination he faces. However, one character living in a very similar situation to Bigger gets significantly less focus than him from the characters in Native Son , as well as within the book itself. Bessie, Bigger’s lover, and eventually the victim of rape and murder by Bigger, plays an insignificant role in Bigger’s mind, and, therefore, is rarely focused on throughout Native Son . Whether intentionally or not, Richard Wright spent minimal time developing Bessie’s character, and in the novel, she is depicted as simply a byproduct. Bessie lives a life akin to Bigger’s...