Throughout the first book of “Native Son”, Richard Wright spends a huge portion solely to showing the life of Bigger Thomas and his environment. Ralph Ellison does the same for the narrator of “Invisible Man.” As I read the first chapter of “Invisible Man”, I slowly discovered the abundance of similarities between the two. The social environment and surroundings where both characters are forced to live ultimately affects their actions throughout their daily lives. We saw what it did to Bigger in "Native Son", and we are beginning to see it with the narrator of “Invisible Man” and his experiences. Both characters are reactive to their environments, rather than taking action on their own. Both are essentially personifications of their environment, but are drastically different in the way that they deal with their racist surroundings. Bigger Thomas’ environment in Chicago teaches him to despise white people and he tries to do anything he can to not feel inferior. The narrator