Visions of Tribulation: White Gaze and Black Spectacle in Richard Wright's "Native Son" and "The Outsider"

Wright's cinematic portrayal of black males creates a complex pattern of subjectivity grounded in desire and signified by the gaze as Wright determinedly constructs desire and agency as synonyms. Because Wright relies on a distinctly visual representation of spectacle, desire, and agency with the subtlety of a craftsman using film techniques for literary ends, contemporary understandings of desire and agency provide fruitful avenues into both novels. [...]Wright's novels suggest that society offers black men no role in the narrative of America other than as murderous spectacles hopelessly outside of the dominant culture. [...]Wright implies that black men cannot transform their representations in the existing American genres-film noir, mystery, detective stories-from which they take their cues.