Native Son Relevant Movements and Worldviews Naturalism, as a literary movement, is an extreme form of realism, and was influenced

d by the evolution theory of Charles Darwin. Naturalist writers believed that one's heredity and surroundings decide one's character. Whereas realism seeks only to describe subjects as they really are, naturalism also attempts to determine "scientifically" the underlying forces (i.e. the environment or heredity) influencing these subjects' actions. They are both opposed to Romanticism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment. Naturalistic works often include uncouth or sordid subject matter. Communism, as a social system, communism is a type of egalitarian society with no state, no private property, and no social classes. In communism, all property is owned by the community as a whole (collectivsim), and all people enjoy equal social and economic status. Perhaps the best known principle of a communist society is From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Existentialism is a (mostly) twentieth-century approach that emphasizes the primacy of individual existence over any presumed natural essence for human beings. Although they differ on many details, existentialists generally suppose that the fact of my existence as a human being entails both my unqualified freedom to make of myself whatever I will and the awesome responsibility of employing that freedom appropriately, without being driven by anxiety toward escaping into the disingenuousness or self-deception of any conventional set of rules for behavior, even though the entire project (life) may turn out to be absurd. Determinism is a far-reaching term, which most widely states that all events in the world are the result of some previous event, or events. In this view, all of reality is already, in a sense, pre-determined or pre-existent and, therefore, nothing new can come into existence. This closed view of the universe sees all events in the world simply as effects of other prior effects, and has particular implications for morality, science, and religion. Ultimately, if determinism is correct, then all events in the future are as unalterable as are all events in the past. Consequently, human freedom is simply an illusion. Fatalism is a belief that every event is bound to happen as it does no matter what we do about it. Fatalism is the most extreme form of determinism, since it denies that human actions have any causal efficacy. Any determinist holds that indigestion is the direct consequence of natural causes, but the fatalist believes that it is bound occur whether or not I eat spicy foods. Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. The existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the 20th century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference.