Thus, while the newspapermen are seeking a big story, they unknowingly touch on the relationship between exploited and exploiter, between proletarian and capitalist. The Thomases are forced to live in a rat-infested kitchenette in the South Side of Chicago, where many buildings are owned by Mr. As readers of the novel already know by this point, the relationship between the Thomases and the Daltons is one of renter and owner. Indeed, during the 1930s, homeownership assumed a new importance, to such an extent that it “increasingly replaced ownership of productive property as an economic measure of freedom” ( Foner 209). Secondly, it is noteworthy that in addressing the issue of “public ownership,” the newspapermen refer specifically to houses. The passage thus serves as a reminder that Native Son was initially applauded as the culmination of “American social realism” or “American proletarian literature” ( Gold 40) together with John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. To begin with, Bigger’s reply that “I don’t own any property” leads readers to recognize that this twenty-year-old African-American man from Chicago is, by definition, a proletarian, namely, a working-class man with no property other than his own labor power. This conversation foregrounds three significant issues at the core of the novel.
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