Native Son - Conflicts

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.

Wrights depiction of Bigger through his use of figurative language techniques, reveals Bigger as an unstable and violent character, and to the reader Biggers character creates an uneasy

The quotations points out the presupposed role of the violent black man; in that his violence is contained to the black community, and would not transcend to the upper class white people. It also presents the issue that by killing Mary; Bigger forgoes any sort of presumption about his abilities. So, Bigger’s ‘tingling sensation’ is,

As we read Native Son, Bigger’s resulting attitude toward the whites is a combination of anger and powerful fear. He fears the whites as an overpowering force that he cannot

Many of the interactions in the Native Son not only reveal more about the characters and their relationships’ with each other in the story, but also depict the social issues that Wright is critiquing. The relationship Bigger and Bessie is one of the central relationships in the story. Many characters in Native Son are shown in order to make a point about Bigger’s character, and Bessie’s presence to an extent does this. When Bigger is around his friends or family, he feels complex emotions towards them which are largely made up of hatred (9, 40-42). Even though Bigger says he loves his girlfriend, he really only uses her to be an accomplice in the ransom plan and, more importantly, he uses her body (204, 269-270). He even later admits to his

Partly why Bigger is detached from himself is because of the sense of fight or flight that is ingrained into his personality. The racism from whites combined with his limited financial situation as a black man results in a fight or flight instinct that is as much a part of Bigger as his physical body is. Bigger describes the effect of the fight or flight instinct on life life as, “... the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger... Being like this was a need of his as deep as eating” (Wright 29).

The obliviousness of white society is most clearly demonstrated by “You know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into these houses, and just see how your people live. You know what I mean? I’ve been to England, France, and Mexico, but I don’t know how people live ten blocks from me. We know so little about each other. I just want to see. I want to know these people. Never in my life have I been inside of a negro home. Yet they must live like we live. They’re human. There are twelve million of them. They live in our country. In the same city with us.” (Wright 70). This excerpt from the book came from one of the dialogues of Mary, the wealthy white girl that Bigger was “forced” to murder because of her intoxication. Mary was a white woman who had not experienced the squalor of black society. As a result, she thinks relatively highly of black society in that she thinks that they live in a similar manner as whites. This adds to the theme of racism because it shows that whites made no effort to learn about how badly the blacks were being oppressed and that whites only saw blacks as inferiors who deserved to be treated like they do because of the immoral actions of a few blacks.

In the beginning, when Bigger started working for the Dalton’s, he had to drive Mary Dalton, the daughter, to the University of Chicago. However, she wanted him to pick up her boyfriend, Jan, and head to a restaurant. When Bigger was in the car with Jan and Mary, “he was very conscious of his black skin...Jan and men like him” made Bigger feel insecure of who he was. (Wright 67) Even though Jan and Mary did not say anything that would insult his race, the presence of white people made him self-conscious. Being

According to the book Native Son, although Bigger is responsible for his own actions, his criminal behavior was a product of the environment in which he was raised and lived in. Bigger is a victim of racism; the society he lived in created the worst part of his victimization which transformed him to a person capable of furious violence, one who even craves such violence. The society Bigger has lived in destroyed his innocence by awakening terrible capabilities within him- capabilities that later enable him to murder people as well. Because power is intimately

He does explain that oppression and racism affected both whites the oppressors and blacks the oppressed. He also explains how a white like girl, befriended a black man, and that a lot of what happened was because of the lack of understanding of the others culture. Yet, I feel that Mr. Wright’s emphasis was more on the struggles that the African Americans endured during the 1930’s. I feel he felt that this oppression and racism affected them the most so he tends to favor their plight more than that of the whites. Wright uses this quote to express how Bigger felt, “To Bigger and his kind, white people were not really people: they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one’s feet in the dark.” (109) Wright does not downplay the suffering that they endured at the hands of the whites. He depicts their poverty, in Bigger’s case the cramped rat infested apartment his family lived in. Wright uses this quote to express the living conditions, "Gimme that skillet, Buddy," he asked quietly, not taking his eyes from the rat. Wright tells of some of their racial struggles and inequalities like not being able to be educated, being forced to live in areas that were not as good as those the whites lived in but still over paying for them. It reads “black people, even though they cannot get good jobs, pay twice as much rent as whites”(248) Wright also declares that Bigger was not even allowed a fair trial to defend himself even though he was guilty of what he had done because of this racism. The headlines “NEGRO RAPIST FAINTS AT INQUEST was featured in the Tribune and in the article, Bigger is described as looking “exactly like an ape with “exceedingly black skin” (279). Wright allows the reader to know that he feels this misguided oppression and racism shows that both races lost the realization that all men are

  In Native Son, Wright employs Naturalistic ideology and imagery, creating the character of Bigger Thomas, who seems to be composed of a mass of disruptive emotions rather than a rational mind joined by a soul. This concept introduces the possibility that racism is not the only message of the novel, that perhaps every person would feel as isolated and alone as Bigger does were he trapped in such a vicious cycle of violence and oppression. Bigger strives to find a place for himself, but the blindness he encounters in those around him and the bleak harshness of the Naturalistic society that Wright presents the reader with close him out as effectively as if they had shut a door in his

After Gus and Bigger finished playing white, they began to talk about the lives of the white people. Gus talks about white privileges. Bigger replies "I don’t know. I just feel that way. Every time I get to thinking about me being black and they being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me..."(Wright, 20). The quotation exposes that Bigger could not overcome the obstacle of fear. His fear of white superiority restrains him from being courageous in taking control to improve where he is at now. Wright used words such as “being here” and “being there” to develop a sense of racial hierarchy that Bigger is afraid to go against. The word “Everytime” suggests that this feeling has always surrounded him and it’s unstoppable. If he opens up and tries, chances may be able to come to him but he chose not to. This fear is like a wall in his heart that he is unable to destroy. The collapse of the wall can cause chaos, and it is not what Bigger want. Altogether, fear of white supremacy confine Bigger in one place and does not let him leave so he can achieve that

The poverty the Bigger is forced into by Mr. Dalton causes him to become a hardened, cruel person. He describes how he sees white people in this quote, “Well, they own everything. They choke you off the face of the earth. They like God..." he swallowed, closed his eyes and sighed. "They don’t even let you feel what you want to feel.

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, depicts the life of the general black community in Chicago during the 1930’s. Though African Americans had been freed from slavery, they were still burdened with financial and social oppression. Forced to live in small, unclean quarters, eat foods on the verge of going bad, and pay entirely too much for both, these people struggled not to be pressured into a dangerous state of mind (Bryant). All the while, they are expected to act subserviently before their oppressors. These conditions rub many the wrong way, especially Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the story. Though everyone he is surrounded by is going through all the same things that he is, growing up poor and uneducated has made Bigger angry at the whole world. You can see this anger in everything he does, from his initial thoughts to his final actions. Because of this, Bigger Thomas almost seems destined to find trouble and meet a horrible fate. Wright uses these conventions of naturalism to develop Bigger’s view of the white community(). With all of these complications, Bigger begins to view all white people as an overwhelming force that drags him to his end. Wright pushes the readers into Bigger’s mind, thoroughly explaining Bigger’s personal decay. Even Wright himself says that Bigger is in fact a native son, just a “product of American culture and the violence and racism that suffuse it” (Wright).

I personally think out of the three novels we read this semester, Bigger is more part of his historical context. I feel that if I was in Biggers’s shoes during the 1930’s during that historical period, it would have been very easy for me to fall into what Bigger did. Bigger was stuck in a system where only racism, crime, violence and injustice surrounded his world. He felt the only way he could continue living in a world where he would never be accepted, it was easier to create fear amongst white people.