Social Justice

Paper Summary:

This paper relates that Richard Wright's 1958 classic "Native Son" and the 1985 Steven Spielberg film adaptation of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" present a distorted sense of social justice, which provides an undercurrent for the mistreatment foisted upon others as a hierarchy of oppressive abuse. Both approach society with the understanding that its sense of justice has been deeply skewed by cultural characteristics of racism and patriarchy. The author relates the story and key protagonists of the book and of the film. The author concludes that, through the conflicting figures as Bigger Thomas in "Native Son" and Mister in "The Color Purple", social justice without equality or sound moral orientation is not simply empty but also potentially dangerous.

From the Paper:

"Ultimately, the course of events around which Richard Wright's important 1940 novel on political and racial issues of the time centers is Bigger's lifelong disengagement from the society that has given him so little. Wright does not take long to introduce, simultaneously, the miserable conditions of Bigger's life and the formative responses which have manifested within him. In the opening sequence of the novel, Bigger and his brother are forced to hunt and kill an enormous rat while his mother and sister stand on the bed and watch in terror."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Baier, A. (1987). The Need for More Than Justice.
• Danticat, E. (1996). Children of the Sea. Krick? Krak!: Vintage Books.
• Molette, B.J. (?). Black Theatre. Wyndham Hall Press.
• Speilberg, S. (1985). The Color Purple. Warner Brothers.
• Wright, R. (1940). Native Son. Chicago: First Perennial Classics, edition 1998.

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