I still think it’s reasonable to read Wright at the level of Dostoevsky. Is Baldwin being a bit of a Nabokov in writing off Native Son as a protest novel? Let us not forget that Dostoevsky is a highly political and moral writer. Native Son and Crime and Punishment are comparable at least in terms of plot. Wright is even using some Joyce talking about the snow in Chicago. We could be obvious about it and say the snow means white oppression, or we could read it as Joyce in Dubliners using snow as an image of death. This doesn’t have to be either/or Native Son is layered enough it can be both.
I still think it’s reasonable to read Wright at the level of Dostoevsky. Is Baldwin being a bit of a Nabokov in writing off Native Son as a protest novel? Let us not forget that Dostoevsky is a highly political and moral writer. Native Son and Crime and Punishment are comparable at least in terms of plot. Wright is even using some Joyce talking about the snow in Chicago. We could be obvious about it and say the snow means white oppression, or we could read it as Joyce in Dubliners using snow as an image of death. This doesn’t have to be either/or Native Son is layered enough it can be both.
That’s the obvious reading for simpletons Mr. Good Grief. Let me guess snow in a book just means it’s snowing for you.