The Rez

Wellpinit is the home of the Spokane Indian Reservation where Arnold lives with his mother, father, sister, and grandmother. The Spirit family have lived on the reservation all of their lives, and Arnold is known there not by his first name, but simply as "Junior." The reservation, though, is a pretty rough place. Fist fighting is a way of life and, since Arnold is a stuttering outcast, he gets picked on and beaten up regularly. Arnold is constantly bullied and belittled, making him a regular member of the "Black-Eye-of-the-Month Club". The reservation is a rough place in other ways, as well. Poverty is a given for most Indian families, and its effects, as Arnold tells us, can be pretty soul-crushing. "Poverty," he writes, "doesn't give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor." Arnold's family often lacks the basic necessities, such as money for gas or food in the refrigerator. Alcoholism is rampant on the reservation. Both of Arnold's parents are alcoholics, as is, well, almost everyone. This situation, unfortunately, leads to many, many senseless deaths. Arnold loses both his grandmother and his sister in alcohol-related accidents. Arnold's father's best friend Eugene gets accidentally shot in the face while fighting over the last drop of alcohol in an almost-empty bottle.
Despite all this, I also see a correlation between the more positive points of the Spokane Indian Reservation and the community I live in, which is Chinatown. The reservation is home to a very close-knit community of Indian families where everybody knows everyone else. Arnold writes that "you know every kid's father, mother, grand parents, dog, cat, and shoe size. I mean, yes, Indians are screwed up, but we're really close to each other." In a way, I feel like this is very much an accurate description of the Chinatown community because everyone that lives in the neighborhood is connected in some way and everyone knows each other or knows people that know each other. Everyone recognizes one another and grows up together being one community. Arnold also often mentions that barely anyone ever leaves the reservation because people are comfortable living where they are in an environment that is familiar to them. I think that is similar to the majority of people that live in Chinatown, especially because many families live near one another within the neighborhood, so it doesn't seem convenient for many people to move farther away from their family. I don't believe that the fist fighting, alcoholism, and poverty are points that I could find similar in my community, but a big part of both the reservation and Chinatown are that they are huge centers of culture and traditions.

Native Sons

Like Bigger, Max feels a deep sense of exclusion from American society. As a Jew and a Communist, he suffers in myriad ways because American society is dictated by the prejudices of the majority. Perhaps because of his own experiences living on the fringes of society, Max is willing and able to understand Bigger’s life story. He sympathizes with the idea that factors outside of Bigger’s control created the conditions that caused Mary’s death. He makes a compelling argument for the judge that life inside prison would allow Bigger to live as a man among equals for the first time in his life. Max concludes his argument for Bigger's life with a speech in a final attempt to persuade people to see the greater good in letting him live. His purpose is to convince that public as well as the judge that Bigger's violent nature is spawned from the oppressive society that keeps him and other African Americans in constant fear and poverty.  "The complex forces of society have isolated here for us a symbol, a test symbol. The prejudices of men have stained this symbol, like a germ stained for examination under the microscope." This simile shows how the white public looks down upon the African American population as a "germ" or plague of society, under constant interrogation and examination. Max extends this simile by relating society to a "sick social organism". He describes the "new form of life", the African American oppressed as "like a weed growing from under a stone", which expresses the immense burden of the white public. Max also illustrates the African American lifestyle as "gliding through our complex civilization like wailing ghosts; they spin like fiery planets lost from their orbits; they wither and die like trees ripped from native soil." This shows the aura of distress and hardship of the African Americans. Despite Max’s sense of failure when he couldn't grant a stay of execution, he does connect with Bigger and is ultimately the one who helps Bigger see his worth as a human being, no matter what he’s done or not done in the short time of his life.