Native Son
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50 free Native Son trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Richard Wright's Native Son was a publishing sensation in 1940 and has been argued over ever since. It follows Bigger Thomas, a twenty-year-old from a South Side tenement, through a few winter days in which a new position with a wealthy household turns into a killing, a manhunt and a trial. Wright refuses to make Bigger likeable, and that is exactly why the novel is so often taught, challenged and debated. This quiz covers the whole story, with extra attention to Book One: Fear, the part most often set for class reading checks: the opening scene in the family's single room, the poolroom gang, the first night at the Dalton house and what happens after it. Later questions follow Bigger through Flight and the courtroom chapters, then turn to Wright's own life, the critics who answered him, and the stage and film adaptations. It suits students checking that they really did the reading, reading groups, and teachers looking for ready-made discussion starters. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which intruder does Bigger Thomas kill with an iron skillet in the opening scene of Native Son?
A rat
A rat is his first kill of the day, and he then dangles the body in front of his sister until she faints.
Q 02On the South Side of which city does Richard Wright's Native Son take place during the 1930s?
Chicago
Chicago's Black Belt is the setting, where the four members of the Thomas family share a single rented room through a hard winter.
Q 03Which trait of Mrs. Dalton doubles as Native Son's symbol of white attitudes to Black suffering?
Her blindness
Her blindness is literal and symbolic: she walks into the bedroom while her daughter is dying and leaves without knowing anyone else was there.
Q 04How does Mary Dalton die in Native Son after Bigger Thomas carries her, drunk, up to her bedroom?
Smothered with a pillow
Smothered with a pillow, Mary dies by accident: Bigger only meant to keep her quiet while her mother stood in the room.
Q 05Where does Bigger Thomas put Mary Dalton's body in Native Son, hoping no trace will remain?
In the furnace
He burns it in the furnace in the Daltons' basement, piling on extra coal before going home to bed.
Q 06Which position does the wealthy Dalton family hire Bigger Thomas to fill at the start of Native Son?
Chauffeur
Chauffeur is the title, and on his very first shift Bigger is sent out to drive the daughter of the house to a university lecture.
Q 07Richard Wright split Native Son into three books titled Fear, Flight and which third word?
Fate
Fate is the title of Book Three, which follows the trial and the long wait in a prison cell.
Q 08Which famous filmmaker directed the Broadway version of Native Son a year after the novel?
Orson Welles
Orson Welles directed and co-produced it, and it was the last time he worked with John Houseman, his partner in founding the Mercury Theatre.
Q 09In which country was the 1951 film of Native Son shot, with Richard Wright himself as Bigger?
Argentina
Argentina took the production in after other countries refused permits, and the slums of Buenos Aires stood in for the South Side.
Q 10Which younger author dismissed Native Son as protest fiction in Everybody's Protest Novel?
James Baldwin
James Baldwin had been Wright's friend, and the essay, later collected in Notes of a Native Son, ended the friendship in acrimony.
Q 11In Native Son, which career does Bigger Thomas tell Gus he would choose if white society let him?
Aviator
Aviator is the dream, voiced as the two friends lean on a wall and watch a plane write an advertisement across the sky.
Q 12Which white-owned business do Bigger Thomas and his friends plan to rob in Book One of Native Son?
Blum's delicatessen
Blum's delicatessen would be the gang's first white target; every earlier theft had been a smaller one inside their own neighbourhood.
Q 13Why does Bigger Thomas attack Gus at the poolroom just before the planned robbery in Native Son?
To hide his cowardice
Q 21To which city was Mary Dalton due to travel by train the morning after she dies in Native Son?
Detroit
Detroit was her destination, so Bigger gambles that the household will assume she simply left on the early train.
Q 22In what does Bigger Thomas carry Mary Dalton's body out of her bedroom in Book One of Native Son?
Her trunk
Her trunk was half packed for a trip, so Bigger uses it to get the body downstairs and later delivers it to the station as if nothing had happened.
Q 23Which threat pushes Bigger Thomas to accept work at the Dalton house at the start of Native Son?
A cut in relief payments
To hide his cowardice, Bigger forces his friend to lick a knife blade, and the brawl conveniently makes the robbery impossible.
Q 14Where does Bigger Thomas first see Mary Dalton in Native Son, hours before working for her father?
In a cinema newsreel
In a cinema newsreel: the film shows the heiress on a Florida holiday with a known radical, which makes Bigger warm to the idea of working for her family.
Q 15Which hidden tie between the charitable Mr. Dalton and Bigger's family does Native Son expose?
He is their landlord
He is their landlord: his company owns the one-room flat the family rents, and it refuses to rent to Black tenants outside the ghetto.
Q 16What does Mary Dalton ask Bigger Thomas about within moments of meeting him in Native Son?
Whether he is in a union
Whether he is in a union is her opening question, and she goes on to call her own father a capitalist in front of the new employee.
Q 17What do Jan and Mary Dalton insist Bigger Thomas do at a South Side diner in Native Son?
Eat with them
Eat with them is the demand: the pair mean it kindly, but being watched by people he knows leaves Bigger burning with shame.
Q 18What does Mrs. Dalton suggest Bigger Thomas take up on his first day in her house in Native Son?
Evening classes
Evening classes are her idea of a kindness: the cook has already told Bigger that Mrs. Dalton made the last chauffeur go to night school.
Q 19Where had Bigger Thomas already been sent for theft before the events of Native Son begin?
Reform school
Reform school is already on his record for stealing tires, and his mother has been telling the family that more trouble will mean prison.
Q 20What does Jan hand Bigger Thomas in Native Son that Bigger later plants as evidence against him?
Political pamphlets
Political pamphlets from Jan end up planted in Bigger's own dresser drawer, ready to make the family's detective suspect a Communist plot.
A cut in relief payments is the threat: the welfare agency arranged the interview and will end the household's aid if he turns it down.
Q 24Who is Bessie Mears to Bigger Thomas in Native Son, before he drags her into his kidnap plot?
His girlfriend
His girlfriend drinks to forget her hard life, and she suspects he has done something to the missing heiress before he admits it.
Q 25What does Bigger Thomas draw on his fake kidnap note in Native Son to implicate Jan's comrades?
A hammer and sickle
A hammer and sickle sits under the signature Red; Mr. Dalton tells reporters it is the Communist Party's emblem, and the papers headline a kidnapping.
Q 26What do reporters uncover at the Dalton house in Native Son, sending Bigger Thomas running?
Bones and an earring
Bones and an earring come to light when a reporter snatches the shovel from Bigger, who has filled the room with smoke.
Q 27What does Bigger Thomas use to kill the sleeping Bessie in an abandoned building in Native Son?
A brick
A brick is the weapon, and only after pushing her body down an air shaft does he realise his stolen money was in her pocket.
Q 28Where do police finally trap Bigger Thomas at the end of Book Two of Native Son?
On a rooftop
On a rooftop, after a chase across the tops of tenements: some five thousand police had been combing the Black Belt for him.
Q 29Who idolizes Bigger Thomas and quietly returns a roll of cash he loses at home in Native Son?
His kid brother
His kid brother, Buddy, keeps the stray bills out of their mother's sight, asks if Bigger is in trouble and is handed a bill to stay quiet.
Q 30Which Communist Party lawyer defends Bigger Thomas in court in Book Three of Native Son?
Boris Max
Boris Max takes the case for free and never claims his client is innocent; he argues that a society built on racial oppression produced the crime.