The Intertextual Relationship between Sex and Crime in Richard Wright’s Native Son and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird

Abstract

This study revolves around the intertexual relationship between sex and crime in Richard Wright's Native Son and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. Intertexuality in its simplest meaning means the shaping of a text's meaning by another text's meaning. This paper deals with the topic of intertexuality based on the theoretical background of Bakhtin's theory of intertexuality as developed by Julia Kristeva and other critics. The study hypothesizes that there is an intertexual relationship between sex and crime in the two selected novels. Actually, the two writers use different styles of writing to depict their stand against racism. This paper aims at investigating the phenomenon of intertexuality between the two novels Wright's Native Son and Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird in tackling the themes of sex and crime. By establishing an intertexual analogy between sex and crime, the two literary texts spotlight the predicament of discriminating people against their race or color. Richard Wright and Harper Lee use their novels to send warning messages against stereotyping the Afro-Americans because it propagates crime. Eventually, the human experiences as well as the themes of literary works are identified for their recurring resemblance through different eras.