Native Son Was Great But Was It True?

The play “Native Son” that we recently went to go see was a play that was good on many levels. The use of the small set and the seamless switching between one scene to another in a split second were two that jumped out at me. What was very consistent thorough the play was O’Brian’s criteria of a true war story. The play was not a play about war, but O’Brian’s criteria are diverse, in that it can be used to tell true stories about conflicts. The blatantly obvious conflict in Native Son was the relationship between black and white people in the 1940’s.

One way of telling a true story is the it is committed to obscenity and evil. The commitment to obscenity and evil rang very clear through the play, as the cast used the N word often to degrade Bigger. He was degraded to the point where the media thought it was not possible for a black person to pull off such an elaborate murder as the one Bigger committed. The scene where Bigger’s mother was begging the lady to let them stay in their current house or face homelessness represents pure evil because there was not an ounce of compassion shown to the family. The woman acted almost non-human, showing no remorse as she laughed in the families face as she refused Bigger’s mothers request. The aspect of O’Brian’s criteria that sticks out to me the most in regards to Native Son is that a true (war) story never seems to end. The bigotry on display today is nowhere near the level it was in the 1940’s but racism is still alive and well today. Racism has such strong roots in this country; there may never be a society that is truly color blind. The never ending racism that Bigger faced still exists, and along with the commitment to obscenity and evil, Native Son represents a true story of race in American.