Big Boy Leaves Home by Richard Wright

First published: 1936

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of work: The early twentieth century

Locale: The American South

Principal Characters:

• Big Boy, an adolescent who becomes a man
• Bobo, his friend, who is tarred, feathered, and burned by a white mob
• Lester, and
• Buck, two black boys who are shot
• Bertha Harvey, a white woman who happens on the four boys when they are naked
• Jim Harvey, her husband
• Liza Morrison, Big Boy's mother
• Saul Morrison, his father
• Lucy Morrison, his sister
• Will Sanders, a truck driver

The Story

The story is divided into five distinct sections. The first opens on a hot day, as four adolescent African American boys laugh and play in the woods, singing and joking about sexually related matters and tussling and rolling around in the grass like young pups. In the second section, they arrive at a swimming hole, where they are determined to swim despite its no-trespassing sign, which clearly tells them that "Ol man Harvey don erllow no niggers t swim in this hole." After playfully frolicking in the water, the boys dry themselves in the sun—black and naked. Their innocence is accentuated by the black winged butterfly hovering near the water, the droning of a bee, and the twittering of sparrows. As the sun dries their skins and warms their blood, they laugh nervously about the risk they are taking, when a white woman suddenly appears.

This woman's sudden intrusion destroys the boys' innocent frolic, forcing them to scramble about, hiding their nakedness and trying to get at their clothes behind where the woman is standing. The woman screams, calling for her husband. As Big Boy dashes for the clothes, he is as frightened as the woman is and stops three feet from her. Just then, her husband, Jim, arrives; he is wearing an army officer's uniform and is carrying a rifle. He immediately shoots Lester and Buck; the boys appear to be headed for his wife, but they are actually running toward Bobo, who is holding their clothes. When Jim points his rifle at Bobo, Big Boy lunges and grabs its barrel. As Big Boy fights with Jim, he accidently shoots him. When the man falls, Big Boy and Bobo turn to look at the woman, who screams and falls at the foot of the tree. Big Boy drags the crying Bobo through the woods.

In the third section, the boys head for home, leaving childhood behind them forever. Knowing that they will be lynched, Bobo can think of nothing else. Big Boy clings to the thought that he must get home to his parents. As he stammers out his story, his father, Saul, castigates him for not going to school and makes sure that the boys did not touch the white woman. Other black men arrive as Big Boy's mother presses his head to her bosom and comforts him. Elder Peters confirms everyone's fears by urging that they get Big Boy away immediately because there will be a lynching. Everyone understands that Big Boy is defenseless. When Brother Sanders says that his son Will is driving a truck to Chicago the next morning, Big Boy proposes to hide overnight in a brickyard kiln. His mother sends him away with hot cornpone, and he asks her to tell Bobo to join him where he is hiding.

In the fourth section, Big Boy runs toward the sunset clutching his hot cornpone. He goes over the crest of a hill and selects the largest of the kilns that he and his friends had dug the week before. Before he climbs into the kiln, he kills a big snake and stomps its head into the dirt. While imagining more snakes inside, he enters the enclosure and waits for Bobo, thinking over the events that have occurred. He regrets each and wishes that he had brought his father's gun—a thought that leads him to fantasize about killing several white men before he is lynched. He imagines newspaper headlines such as "Nigger Kills Dozen of Mob Befoo Lynched!" He smiles as he imagines stomping a white man as he has the snake. He knows, however, that any opportunity to display real courage and rebellion is only a fantasy.

When Big Boy hears a mob of white men and women looking for him, he overhears someone saying that they have already burned down his parents' home. He watches in helpless horror as barking dogs chase Bobo, whom the mob tars, feathers, and burns, after taking his finger and his ear as souvenirs. Someone in the mob says, "Ef they git erway notta woman in this town would be safe." Afterward the mob disperses, leaving Big Boy alone in his hole. As the mob passes his hole, a dog smells him and barks into the hole. Fearing that the dog will reveal his presence, Big Boy kills it and falls asleep holding its body in his arms.

The fifth section opens at daybreak, with Big Boy on his knees in a puddle of rainwater, staring at the dog's stiff body. He feels that he is waking from a dream, when he hears a truck approach. The driver, Will Sanders, opens a trapdoor behind his seat and pushes Big Boy into the truck, letting the trapdoor fall. As Big Boy rides off, he hears the lumber mill's six o'clock whistle. Later Will stops and gets him a drink of water in his hat. The story ends as the truck speeds Big Boy northward, jolting him, as he turns on his side to sleep. Initiated into violence, he is now a man.

Bibliography

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Bloom, Harold, ed. Richard Wright. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.

Butler, Robert."Native Son": The Emergence of a New Black Hero. Boston: Twayne, 1991.

Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright. Translated by Isabel Barzun. New York: William Morrow, 1973.

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Hakutani, Yoshinobu. Richard Wright and Racial Discourse. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996.

Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. Critical Essays on Richard Wright's "Native Son." New York: Twayne, 1997.

Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. A Richard Wright Bibliography: Fifty Years of Criticism and Commentary: 1933-1982. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1988.

Rand, William E. "The Structure of the Outsider in the Short Fiction of Richard Wright and F. Scott Fitzgerald." CLA Journal 40 (December, 1996): 230-245.

Walker, Margaret. Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius. New York: Warner, 1988.