Communism and the Red scare

Communism and the Red scare in Native Son operate less as a developed account of Communist politics than as a ready-made language of suspicion. Pamphlets and a hammer-and-sickle emblem allow Bigger Thomas to redirect attention toward Jan Erlone, while white investigators and newspapers enlarge that suspicion into a public explanation for Mary Dalton’s disappearance. The resulting scandal is deeply ironic: Bigger exploits anti-Communist assumptions to conceal his responsibility, but those same assumptions eventually bring Max into the case, where he argues that society’s racial and economic order must be examined alongside the crime.

Pamphlets as a Cover Story

On Sunday morning, as he prepares to take Mary Dalton’s trunk to the station, Bigger finds the pamphlets Jan gave him among his belongings. Rather than discard them, he decides to keep them as potential evidence that he had been reluctant to associate with Jan. Their printed titles include Race Prejudice on Trial, The Negro Question in the United States, and Black and White Unite and Fight. The last pamphlet bears a black-and-white image of a hammer and sickle and identifies the Communist Party of the United States as its issuer.

Bigger’s handling of the pamphlets is calculated. He plans to place them in a drawer at the Dalton home and, if questioned, claim that he did not read them, had not wanted them, and took them only because Jan insisted. He also plans to portray himself as afraid of Reds and unwilling to spend time with Jan and Mary. He remembers Jan’s handshake beside the car as an occasion of hate and shame, then turns that memory into a story of unwilling contact: he can say that he sat and ate with the white couple only because it was his job. The pamphlets are therefore not simply political material in the plot; Bigger converts them into props for a defense he is rehearsing before anyone has accused him.

That strategy depends on the difference between the pamphlets’ expressed solidarity and the fear Bigger expects them to provoke. One drawing shows a white hand clasping a black hand, recalling Jan’s actual gesture toward him. Bigger does not present that moment as fellowship. He recasts it as proof of his supposed discomfort with political association, anticipating that an audience already suspicious of Communists will find the explanation credible.

Suspicion Enters the Investigation

The suspicion first gains authority through the Dalton household’s interpretation of Jan’s political associations. When Mr. Dalton learns that Mary had been at the Labor Defender Office on Lake Street, he identifies the office as a Communist location and calls Jan a Red. Britten’s interrogation follows that lead: he asks Bigger what Communist unit he belongs to, and continues pressing him after Bigger denies that the meal with Jan and Mary was a political gathering. The questioning treats political affiliation as a plausible hidden explanation before it establishes what happened to Mary.

Mr. Dalton’s response also shows that the investigation is shaped by concern about the public consequences of the accusation. He agrees that Jan should be brought in, but objects to having him picked up in a way that might allow the Reds to make a public issue of the arrest. He says he will try to get Jan to come to the house by telephoning his office or home. The effort to manage the accusation thus accompanies the effort to investigate it: the possibility of Communist publicity is itself treated as a problem for the wealthy household.

As the story of a kidnapping takes hold, anti-Communist speculation supplies an easy motive. People suggest that Reds might be trying to raise money, comparing the supposed abduction to a notorious kidnapping associated in their conversation with Nazi financing. A newspaper then declares that a Red has been seized as a girl vanishes and reports that Reds accuse the Daltons of spiriting away their daughter. The case is no longer only a family’s search for Mary; it has become a struggle over which political group can claim the story and whose account will circulate publicly.

Emblems, Accusations, and Publicity

The hammer and sickle turns suspicion into something that appears to be physical evidence. When Mr. Dalton points out the emblem scrawled beneath the signature on the ransom note, the men in the basement are astonished, and several rush away to telephone their reports. The emblem seems to confirm the political story at the very moment when it threatens to overwhelm the investigation. Bigger recognizes the advantage: the men have largely treated him as an ignorant bystander, and he wants to keep their attention directed toward Jan and Jan’s associates.

The questioning makes the diversion more explicit. One of the men asks whether Jan spoke to Bigger about Communism; Bigger answers yes. His answer gives the investigators a connection they can pursue, even though it does not establish that Jan abducted Mary. Jan, in turn, says Bigger lied about whether he had been at the Dalton home. The disagreement over Bigger’s account and the public dispute over Jan’s arrest become intertwined: Jan accuses the Daltons of using the case to slander the Communist Party and disrupt his relationship with Mary, while the investigators continue to test Bigger’s claims about political conversation.

Bigger’s fabrication draws on the same public language he sees around him. The ransom note’s Communist emblem and the press’s Red narrative give his deception a recognizable form. Yet the clues do not prove that Communists committed the crime. Their force comes from the readiness of the characters and the press to interpret an emblem and an association as a sufficient explanation. Political fear supplies a story before the evidence can settle what happened.

Max’s Intervention and the Larger Conflict

The Red scare eventually helps bring Max into the defense. Speaking to Buckley, Max explains that he would not have appeared if the prosecution had not brought the Communist Party’s name into the murder. He acknowledges that Bigger signed the Party’s name to the kidnapping note, but argues that the boy took the idea from the newspapers. In Max’s account, Bigger’s attempt to blame Communists is a response to having repeatedly heard public figures lie about them. Max does not use this explanation to deny that Bigger committed the crimes; he says he is defending him because he believes men like Buckley helped make him what he is, and because the public must understand the conditions behind his actions.

This defense reverses the direction of the accusation. At first, the Red label offers Bigger a way to direct suspicion away from himself. In court, the same label becomes evidence of how public rhetoric can shape the explanations available to him. Max argues that blaming Communists cannot substitute for understanding why Bigger acted, just as punishing an individual cannot by itself address the society that formed his restricted choices.

Political Fear and Structural Blindness

Max’s wider argument connects the case to the material relations between the Thomas and Dalton families. He challenges Mr. Dalton over the rent charged to Black families, including the eight dollars a week paid by the Thomases for one unventilated, rat-infested room shared by four people. He also questions a company policy that keeps Black residents concentrated on the South Side, and contrasts that system with Mr. Dalton’s charitable donations. The juxtaposition matters to the novel’s treatment of political suspicion: the courtroom can be quick to seize on a Communist emblem while resisting questions about the housing arrangements and economic power that structure Bigger’s life.

In his plea, Max asks the court to consider a way of life produced by collective social conditions rather than treating Bigger as an inexplicable threat. He recalls that Black people are told where to live, how much schooling they may receive, where they may eat, and what work they may do. He also argues that the Daltons’ landlord, merchant, and employer relationships with the Thomas family left the families on sharply unequal footing: charity did not undo the system of rent, restricted housing, and dependence. The Red scare is one part of a wider conflict over what the public is willing to see. Political fear makes a dramatic accusation; Max’s argument turns attention toward the less sensational structures that accusation can conceal.