The urban landscape is an important entity in early 20th century African American literature. Many novels explore the theme of migration and the settlement of African Americans in northern urban lifestyles. Creating complex portraits of the urban landscape, many of which depict hostile and predatory environments, through the use of settings 'The Street', 'Brown Girl, Brownstones' and 'The Native Son', incorporate a primary importance of imagery architecture and symbolism infused into the tales. of the struggle of African Americans to make a living in the North. Paul Dunbar's "The Native Son" uses gothic landscapes to demonstrate the realistic horrors of life in the North. Through the use of architectural imagery infused with characterization and diction, Wright incorporates themes such as paranoia, barbarism, and impressionability. From the beginning, the darkness and mood of the novel is omniscient and gloomy. There is a clear connection between the environment and “monsters”. In the novel, it seems that the setting has a metaphorical relationship to the characterization of the individuals in the novel. In the novel, the vampire motif is exercised through the use of central scenes and locations. Someone bigger than a vampire can't enter the house uninvited. Bigger by crossing or “trespassing” into this space ideologically condemned to African-Americans (i.e. the physical space between Bigger Thomas and Mary Dalton) disrupted social regulations. These thresholds are sacrosanct; the monstrous “other” cannot enter unwelcomely. What is metaphorically prohibited in the novel are ideological “norms” regarding race and sexuality. Violating or transgressing them as Bigger Thomas does without prompting from white authorities, effectively a...... middle of paper...... Americans find themselves trapped by financial and racial burdens, marginalized in a world where abundance is present. promised for all. A particular similarity lies in the depictions of urban ghettos throughout the writings. As readers, we are exposed to the real slum living and working conditions that African Americans endured, whether on the South Side of Chicago or in Brooklyn, New York. Utilizing the simplest level of architecture and construction, the imagery served as a grand metaphor for the continued degradation of the protagonists suffering in the environment that paralleled much of their lives. Thus showing the reader that the pursuit of the ideal of finding safe haven for an African American [especially during the period of the Great Migration] is built in lies, and it is only a dream that will come to pass. to decompose and be destroyed in the same sense. like the houses they chase.