Is Bigger No Longer Fearful In The Presence Of Gus, Jack And G. H.

He is not a very nice person. He is rude to his mother, he is a bully to his sister and to his friends. However, the situation that Bigger is forced to be in, and what drives him to make most of his actions, creates a sympathetic tone where the reader feels bad for Bigger. It is not his fault that he comes from a poor family or that he is a black man in a time where racism is very prevalent.

Firstly, Wright utilizes the figurative language technique simile to characterize Bigger as an unstable character in order to create an uneasy mood. Wright writes “These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger—like water ebbing and flowing from the tug of a far-away, invisible force” (Wright 31). Bigger is being depicted as a character who suffers from massive mood and character changes, going from silence to hatred and rage. This is why Bigger can be seen as an unstable character in the passage, because

This gap between what Bigger understands about himself and what the narrative voice can comprehend creates dramatic irony, especially when Bigger is confronted with Jan and Mary’s inexplicably friendly behavior. Wright’s descriptions of Jan and Mary make their good intentions clear to all but Bigger, and therefore sets up an unequal relationship between Bigger and the reader. He is now at the mercy not only of his own impulses, his employer’s wishes, and the law of white society, but also of Wright and his audience. The vertical consciousness that allows us to see so clearly what Bigger cannot, supports the deterministic trap that Wright has set for him. His environment has saddled him with unsatisfied urges, and now Wright has made him the victim of chance. In Mary’s claim that she wants to see how black people live in Chicago, Bigger experiences the “deep sense of exclusion” that Wright describes in How Bigger Was Born (518). Then, in seeing Mary’s white robed mother at her bedroom door, he encounters the corresponding “feeling of looking at things with a painful and unwarrantable nakedness,” the understanding of his total vulnerability, which forces him to kill Mary (518). His fate is sealed. With this dramatic irony, produced by a kind of vertical consciousness, Wright has proven to what extent the black man’s agency, his interiority, is “warped” by external forces and placed in

Early within the novel Wright establishes Bigger as a force to be feared when Bigger causes his younger sister, Vera, to faint by dangling a freshly killed rat before her face. As his mother, Ma, tends to Vera she sobs, “Boy, sometimes I wonder what makes you act like you do” (Wright 7). This shows that Bigger has a history of acting in an insensitive manner towards members of his own family. If his lack of sensitivity is not enough to isolate him from those within his own family, the consequences of those actions are surely enough to. Additionally, Bigger extends these tactless acts to his friend and gang member, Gus, and love interest, Bessie.

Out of these four types of betrayals, Bigger Thomas committed two. One in his lying to the Dalton family and killing their daughter, Mary, and a second because when he committed such offences against the Daltons, he also betrayed his family due to the fact that he was the man of the household and was expected to provide for his family, which he failed to do when he murdered two innocent women and was then executed. When he accidentally smothered Mary in her sleep, Bigger immediately panicked, and his first thought was to hide the body. Finally deciding to put her body in the furnace so there would be no evidence of her even coming home from a gala, he then had to behead the corpse in order to make it fit into the opening. Bigger had said that he had never felt more alive than before, as if finally acting on his impulses freed him from the prison he had been living in for so long.

Bigger is troubled and has become violent due to the conditions in which he grew up in. There are many examples of Bigger having a violent outburst, such as,

The plan falls through after Bigger starts a fight with one of the guys who comes late. "Bigger was afraid of robbing a white man and he knew that Gus was afraid, too… He hated Gus because he knew that Gus was afraid, as even he was; and he feared Gus because he felt that Gus would consent and then he would be compelled to go through with the robbery" (25). Bigger hates his race and wishes he could escape the oppression. He isn't proud of being black and sees it as an impediment and a burden. These views of his own race allow him to pilfer from them with no remorse. He and his friends clandestinely envy the freedom that white people experience. He longs to enjoy their privileges but doesn't know how to release himself of the racial boundaries: ‘"Them white boys sure can fly," Gus said. "Yeah," bigger said wistfully. "They get a chance to do everything."… "I could fly a plane if I had a chance," Bigger said. "If you wasn't black and if you had some money and if they'd let you go to aviation school, you could fly a plane," Gus said' (16-17). Racism has curtailed Bigger's ambitions in life and his perception of himself. He is ashamed of his family's penury and he hides his feelings. He has crafted a façade of toughness to guard himself from the pressure he feels because of his family's social position and his inability to help

Bigger wants to break through that blindness, to discover something of worth in himself, thinking that "all one had to do was be bold, do something nobody ever thought of. The whole things came to him in the form of a powerful and simple feeling; there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made them blind, and if he could see while others were blind, then he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it" (p.120). Just as Bigger later hides himself amidst the catacombs of the old buildings, many people hide themselves deep within their minds in order to bear the ordeal of life and the oppression of an uncaring society. But their blindness allows them something that Bigger cannot achieve: it allows these people to meld into the society that is the city, while Bigger must stand at the outside of that community alternately marvelling and hating the compromises of those within.

In the same fashion Bigger does another thing to solidify that he does not have empathy or value human life. Inked in the pages of Native Son, but left out of Jerrold Freedman's film, Bigger commits more than one murder. In the book Bigger murders and rapes his then girlfriend Bessie. As Jared Rosenbaum puts it in his article, "Bigger Thomas: Guilty or Innocent", he states "Already into the second book, Bigger Is free from the grasp of Jan and Mary, and he is making his own choices... In my eyes, one of the few choices that Bigger

When they finally get home, mary is so drunk that she can’t make it to her room. Bigger, drunk and slightly aroused, he tries to kiss Mary. Mary’s blind mother comes in the room, and bigger gets nervous. Afraid that mary will make his presence known, he tries to quiet her with a pillow. Somehow he accidentally smothers her. This is a feeling Bigger has never known before, like he had gained some kind of power over this powerful oppression called “white people”. At first he didn’t know what he was going to do. He shoves her in her luggage trunk and carry it downstairs. He see’s the furnace and tries to hide her in there, but her shoulders wouldn’t fit. He starts hacking her head off with a hatchet, then he throws it in the furnace with the body. He starts planning and blames it all on Jan. He eats breakfast at the Daltons house and then starts to take her trunk to the train station, then he goes to see bessie. He tells her about the Dalton girl missing, then decides to write a ransom letter to the Daltons, trying to get money out of them. He bullies bessie into playing part in this scheme. She could tell there was part of the story that he wasn’t telling her. Mr. Dalton finds out that Mary never got to Detroit, and that her bag was never claimed, so he hires a private detective named Britten. Britten brings Jan to the house and starts questioning him. He knows Bigger is lying and confronts him on the street about it, but Bigger scares him off with a gun. He

She tells Bigger, “I think I can trust you” (Wright 64) in order to toy with his emotions and disobey his boss’ orders as Bigger, Mary, and Mary’s communist boyfriend Jan Erlone take the car out for a night in the loop. After a rousing evening on the town filled with booze and conversations about communism that left Bigger offended and ashamed to be black, it became Bigger’s duty to make sure that Mary was placed safely in her bed after being too intoxicated to stand on her own. Because Bigger strives to obey his boss, he feels inclined to personally place Mary in her own room in order to avoid trouble. This shows that Bigger Thomas took Mary to her bedroom with no intention of causing any problems in his new workplace reminding the reader that Bigger is not an evil human being, just a product of his environment. After being in Mary’s bedroom, Bigger decided to overstay his welcome due to his curious arousal with white women. To Bigger’s surprise, “a hysterical terror seized him” (Wright 85) as Mrs. Dalton makes an appearance in Mary’s bedroom to check on her daughter. Bigger automatically assumed that if he was caught in Mary Dalton’s bedroom at an odd hour of the night he would be immediately fired and accused of raping a white woman that could ruin his already tragic life forever. Due to her blindness, Bigger was not seen immediately, but he realized if Mary kept mumbling, Mrs. Dalton would make her way

While Mr. Dalton, owner of the controlling stock of the Dalton Real Estate company which owns the controlling stock of the South Side Real Estate company, claims to work towards the cause of colored people, he refuses to rent out houses to Negroes outside of the South Side. As a result, Bigger was born and raised under such constraints, and it is his worry that he will never be given the chance to succeed because the whites have confined him and his people. As mentioned earlier in the novel, Bigger expresses his interest towards aviation. However, it frustrates him that he will never get the chance to pursue his interest because in order to do so he would have to complete school with an aviation major, but the opportunity will never come to him because of his black skin. As a result, because Bigger isn't given the freedom to accomplish his goals, he cannot better himself.

He hates how the two important women in his life, Bessie and his mother, both ignore that their lives are meaningless in the world. Bessie drinks away her agony while his mother turns to prayer. Bigger is angered that the blacks do nothing about their insignificance in life. He believes that every black person should retaliate against the whites as he did with Mary so that the whites will realize that they are not just dumb niggers. He hates that everyone is blind to his crime.

Bigger’s mom and Vera spot a rat, and Bigger kills it with a frying pan. Then, Bigger meets up with his gang to plan to rob a white man, but the fear of retaliation causes them to back out. Later, Bigger goes to an interview at the Daltons’. Mr. Dalton tells Bigger he is to be a chauffeur for the Dalton family. Bigger drives Mary to university that evening, but she instead says she wants to meet with her friend Jan; Jan and Mary have dinner with Bigger, and though they wish to be nice to him, they only embarrass him with their kindness. Bigger drops of Jan and brings Mary back home. Bigger carries Mary, who is drunk, upstairs and puts her to bed. While he is in her room, Mrs. Dalton, who is blind, comes in, smells alcohol, and believes that Mary is intoxicated again. Bigger puts a pillow over Mary’s face to keep her from saying that Bigger is in the room. Once Mrs. Dalton leaves Bigger realizes that he has accidentally killed Mary. Bigger takes her body downstairs, burns it in the furnace, and goes home. The next day, Bigger goes back to the Dalton house to develop an alibi. Bigger realizes it is most feasible that Jan is the murderer, so Bigger begins to tell the Daltons and Peggy that Jan stayed late at the house the previous night. Mr. Dalton calls Britten, a private investigator, to ask Bigger questions, and Britten

Additionally, Bigger asserts control over his friends to accomplish his own goals. When he plans to rob Blum’s store and decides that it is not a good idea, he beats Gus to gain control. Bigger does this because he realized that he lost control at the point when he decided to take the chance of ruining his own life by robbing a white store over getting a job with the Dalton’s; making that choice left the power in Blum’s hands. Whether or not Bigger got away unharmed would depend on Blum’s weapon possession, how fast he contacted the police, and if the police could catch him, none of which Bigger could control. Though the logical solution would be to inform Gus, G.H.,