Native Son, by Richard Wright is a novel primarily about Racism, and its effects on both blacks and whites in the 1930's. Wright creates an environment in which racism permeates every level of society and, through his main character, Bigger Thomas, creates a sensation (the murder of Mary) that makes some people (Max) take a step back, and truly see the system for what it is. "The evil of modern society isn't that it creates racism, but that it creates conditions in which people who don't suffer injustices seem incapable of caring about those who do." Wright's novel fully backs this statement with the motif of Blindness, and further explains Bigger's actions in respect to race through several other symbols or motifs like the Christian cross, or snow.
             In the novel, Wright creates his environment that does not only contain racism, but an underlying apathy towards those who do not suffer from the same injustices as the persecuted (Blacks and Communists, in this book). One of the ways he sets up this environment is through the blindness of the white community, and anyone "on the good side of the line." Wright represents this blindness through Mrs. Dalton. For instance, in reality, if she had not been blind, she would have seen Bigger with Mary and it would have ended there. However, since she is blind, literally and figuratively, she cannot catch bigger, and thus ensures her daughters death. This is a metaphor for the blindness that cripples white society, and is the cause Max blames in his closing statement. "He had done this. He had brought all this about. In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him." It is this attitude, that nothing else matters, that makes bigger live day by day. If upper society had not been so blind, had not segregated blacks from the beginning, if they had given Bigger something to do with his life, this ...