Richard
wright who portrays Bigger Thomas as the stereotypical black man living in the
South Side of Chicago, shows the oppression and racism that Bigger has to experience
every day. Through Native Son, I
noticed how Wright implies that Bigger’s actions were a product of his (Bigger’s)
trapped feeling in this white world, while giving a glimpse of how other upper
class whites would confuse the meaning behind Bigger’s actions as a
generalization of the evil nature in every black human being.
These frequent little examples, in Native Son, which give Bigger this trapped feeling, almost become
normal to the point where sometimes I passed them over, disregarding it. For example,
in one of the first scenes of Native Son
when Bigger walked out the door of his house for the first time, and saw a
poster of Buckley with his “index finger pointed straight out to each passer-by”
and written above “were tall red letters: YOU CAN’T WIN” (Wright, pg. 13), I
saw the extent to which Bigger is oppressed, with the sign, as if it was waiting
for him right outside his house, being a metaphor reminding Bigger that everywhere
he goes, he has to follow the rules of what society tells him he should be.
This constant pounding of oppression Bigger is receiving,
has its effects and shows itself in one of the next scenes where Bigger is with
his friends, Jack, G.H, and Gus. Immediately, I noticed how aggressive and
dominant he tries to act around them, and at one point he even threatens Gus by
putting the “tip of a blade into Gus’s shirt” (Wright, pg. 39). Initially when
I read it, I thought to myself that Bigger just had some anger problems, and didn’t
know how to control it. But I realized later on that there was more to it. He
acted the way he did because when he’s around people of his own race, it’s the
only time he can express his freedom showing them he can do what he wants, therefore
convincing himself that he is living in a free world.
On the other hand, when Bigger is around whites, he is noticeably
humbler and conserved, almost a totally different person by saying as little as
possible and following instructions. So it comes to him as a surprise when he
is introduced to an energetic Mary Dalton, who tries to be empathetic to him by
“respond[ing] to him as if he were human”. This attitude somehow makes Bigger feel
even more trapped because he doesn’t know how to act when approached this way, so
he’s not used to it. When he is in the car with Jan and Mary, he can either
express all his feelings to them and comply, or act formal and humble, the way
the country has taught him to act around white folks. Later on, this discomfort
brings Bigger to kill Mary, and by doing, so he also breaks free of what people
would think the stereotypical black male would do, “he had done something that
even he though not possible” (Wright, pg. 106) and he enjoys that feeling of
freedom he has, owning up to it.
But what is of greater importance to this narrative, is
what Max expresses in court. He tells the judge that this case is not solely
Bigger’s fault, but that there were also some serious social aspects in his
life that made him act the way he did. He says that “It was but a tiny aspect
of what he had been doing all his life! He was living, only as he knew how”
(Wright pg. 400), so Bigger was just a product of society and acted the only
way he knew how to. Max goes onto say that if the larger problem of this court
case isn’t solved, which is saving this racist society first, then there will
be hundreds more Bigger Thomas’s in this world, and nothing is achieved in the
long run by executing Bigger. Looking back on it, Mary Dalton was only trying
to help this race problem and happened to start with Bigger, but Bigger didn’t realize
and took it negatively because of the life he’s had, which taught him these irreversible
tension between blacks and whites.
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