The American Dream is a set of social ideas about what the United States offers as equality, democracy, and material prosperity. The American Dream is an opportunity and is based on perspective; what happens to the dreamer when the opportunity is not granted to him? Richard Wright's 1940 novel “Native Son” is about a troubled young man in his early twenties set in the Southside ghetto of Chicago; he is unemployed and is trying to find out who he really is. Fear, hatred and racism are central conflicts and have influenced Bigger Thomas, the protagonist, devastating his uniqueness so relentlessly that his self-expression has resulted in violence. Wright used Bigger Thomas to exemplify the effects racism has on the psychological state of African American victims. Through symbols Wright expresses the racism and hypocrisy of the justice system as a negative influence on Bigger's dream, the "Native Son." The novel begins with the sound of an alarm ringing a wake-up call for a family living in a rat-infested area. Segregated community in the Southside ghetto of Chicago. The bell not only serves to wake up the Thomas family in the novel, but is also a warning to America if it does not change the way it accepts life from a racist perspective. Bigger is fiercely upset and angry that his family has to live in a one-room apartment where the brothers have to hide their faces out of the shame that their sister, Vera, and mother, Mrs. Thomas would cause. He was limited because he only completed eighth grade and racism in the real estate practice forces the Thomas family to live in poverty. The narrator states, “He put their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew they were suffering and that he had no power to help them. He knows... middle of the paper... the new symbols were used to show how during the 1930's African Americans were not given the opportunity of the American dream. In fact, the author was born a slave and moved north to escape Jim Crow laws in the South. The South was segregated and the North was integrated, with limited rights for African Americans. Wright implemented this through oppression in the setting of the story. The American dream is in fact an opportunity, it is not known what the ancestors dreamed of the country becoming. After slavery, things changed and the question will always remain open: is it different now? Not having the right to attend school is equivalent to not getting a quality education. Whether it is a right or not, the American dream should be given as equal opportunity. Ironically, Bigger was the victim, because he was never given the opportunity to dream.