BOOKS
245
all the faults of the
Grapes
0/
Wrath,
knew how to combine realism with
an epic symbolism; the Lindstrom family ought to have had the same
function in Levin's book as the Joad family had in Steinbeck's. This is
perhaps academic criticism, but it is clear that the book does suffer from
some such lack.
Mr. Wright's novel has already been widely discussed in the press,
and hailed as a powerful study of a certain type of Negro mind, a type of
mind, as the book makes clear, which has been produced by the treatment
of the colored people by the whites through the generations. The sullen
helplessness of an oppressed race living in the midst of its oppressors, yet
cut off from them, is well portrayed, and the conclusion-that under these
circumstances a man will find the only freedom he has ever known in
accepting full responsibility for a crime which was unpremeditated and
unintentional, and that we can only understand this by understanding the
psychology produced by his evironment-is convincingly pushed home.
There is a real honesty in the book, a patent desire to understand thor–
oughly, and to make the reader understand, what the story of Bigger
Thomas
means.
The story is deliberately organised so as to bring to light
the psychological and sociological factors underlying the action. The
events are unimportant; the author is concerned to point out that this
kind
of thing is produced by this kind of attitude, and the responsibility lies not
with those who adopt it but with the community in general. It is a pity,
therefore, that the actual crime of Bigger Thomas should have been made
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violent and unusual. To hack off the head of an accidentally smothered
girl with a hatchet so as to be able to stick her body more conveniently
into the furnace is not the kind of action to which the Bigger Thomases of
America are likely to be driven, and consequently Mr. Wright's novel, as
interpretation, suffers. True, the author is at pains to insist that the actual
crime is unimportant, that it is the attitude that lay behind it that matters.
But why, then, does he introduce such a violent and fortuitous piece of
action? The whole point about a novel of this kind, which is trying to
probe behind action to an explanation of the nature and origin of the
typical situation the action represents, lies in its general applicability, and
the action therefore should be conceived as illustrative fable. The fable
would have been more powerful had it been made up of events of less melo–
dramatic quality, showing the murder of personality by environment and
the
death-in-life that follows by suggesting the cumulative effect of petty
crimes and petty frustrations. Mr. Wright is trying to prove a normal
thesis by an abnormal case, and though the case he chooses is one proof
of his thesis it is not the most convincing. Yet in spite of this fault, this
is
an
important and a persuasive work. The gap between the fable and the
Bloral may weaken the book as a novel, but the separate parts are
well
done.
Caldwell's short novel tells of the lynching of an innocent young
Negro in the cotton fields of Georgia, but the interest lies less in the lynch–
~,
which is not actually described, than in the local characters, the atmos-
