Max is one of the central characters of the novel when it comes to the issues of Marxism because he blames capitalism entirely for the inequality of blacks; he believes that it is capitalism that has kept the black people oppressed. Max tries to show the jury that the case is not just about one black man and one black woman, but rather, it is about millions of blacks that have been kept down, all the while desperately trying to rise to the class status that white people have.

Marx and Engels speculated that literature reflects and sustains the material life of a society. To look at this idea and apply it Wright's use of the novel, we can see that the material conditions of Bigger's life -- what he ate, how he made money, what he did for work, determined his ideas. Furthermore, Mr. Dalton's material conditions determined his...
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