SECTION F: NON - AFRICAN PROSE RICHARD WRIGHT: Native Son How are the Daltons portrayed in the novel?

Answer Details

In Richard Wright's Native Son, the Daltons are portrayed as wealthy white philanthropists whose well-meaning charity is undercut by a deep blindness to the systemic racism from which they profit. Wright uses them to expose the hypocrisy and limits of white liberal goodwill.

Rich benefactors and employers. Mr. Henry Dalton and his wife are a rich Chicago family who employ Bigger Thomas as their chauffeur, part of what they see as their programme of helping poor black people. They give to black charities and pride themselves on their generosity, and they offer Bigger a job and the chance of night school.

Profiteers of the ghetto. Their charity is deeply hypocritical. Mr. Dalton owns, through the South Side Real Estate Company, the very slum housing in which the Thomas family and other black people are forced to live at extortionate rents in overcrowded, rat-infested flats. The wealth he gives away in charity is drawn from the exploitation of the black poor he claims to help, and he never questions the segregation that keeps them confined and overcharged.

Symbolic blindness. Mrs. Dalton is literally blind, and Wright makes her blindness a powerful symbol of the moral and social blindness of the whole family and of white liberal society. The Daltons cannot see the reality of black life or recognise how their own actions sustain the oppression they deplore.

Naive liberalism in Mary. Their daughter Mary, though friendly and full of progressive sympathy, treats Bigger with a careless, patronising familiarity that ignores the dangerous racial gulf between them, and her naivety helps precipitate the tragedy of her death.

Conclusion. The Daltons are portrayed as generous yet blind, philanthropists whose charity masks their complicity in racial exploitation. Through them Wright criticises a paternalistic white liberalism that offers piecemeal kindness while upholding the unjust system that produces a Bigger Thomas.