"Native Son" and "The Street"

Paper Summary:

This paper provides a background and overview of realism and naturalism, a comparison of Richard Wright's "Native Son" with Ann Petry's "The Street" from a naturalism perspective and others, followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

From the Paper:

"Early on in her book, Petry describes her protagonist, Lutie Johnson, who contemplates with both "irony and indignation on the violations of privacy that segregation and its attendant overcrowding engender in 1940s Harlem" (Hicks, 2002, p. 89). According to a scene described by Petry, Lutie would "fill up all the cots--row after row of them. And when the tenants who had apartments came in late at night, they would have the added pleasure of checking up on the occupants. . . . And the tenants who had apartments would sit on the stairs just as though the hall were a theater and the performance about to start--they'd sit there waiting until Jackson came home to see what he'd do when he found Rinaldi tucked into the cot with his girl friend (Petry, 1947, pp. 7-8)."

More papers on "Native Son" and "The Street":

• Book Review # 43966 : " Power and Violence in African-American Literature"
• Research Paper # 93904 : "Native Americans and the Colonists"
• Case Study # 34112 : "H.B. Fuller and the Street Children of Central America"

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