Persuasive Essay: Native Son

801 Words2 Pages

Zoe Cooper
Period 5
April 27, 2014
Persuasive Essay – Native Son – Option #2
Bigger did not have a fair trial. On a Saturday, Bigger learned that he would have a job as a chauffeur for a millionaire family; he takes the job after rejecting the temptation to rob Blum's deli. Early Sunday morning, Bigger returns Mary Dalton to her home, accidentally suffocating her. Later Sunday, Bigger visits Bessie, forges a ransom note, discovers the "discovery" of Mary's earrings in the ash, returns to Bessie and rapes and kills her. Monday, Bigger is on the run and he is caught that very night. His inquest is on a Tuesday, his trial is on a Wednesday, and his execution is to be "on or before midnight," Friday. He was tortured his fingernails have been ripped out.
Bigger’s confession was coerced. State Attorney Dalton assures Bigger that he has no need for tactics and that the young man is as already caught so he might as well confess. Buckley warns Bigger that it will be better for him to confess. He describes Bigger as a wayward youth who has broken his mother's heart and surely, if he might escape the justice of the state, he would meet a far worse fate at the hands of the angry, frothing mob that is only growing. Buckley tells Bigger the police know that Bigger raped her and that he threw her body in an airshaft. Buckley suggests that Bigger's only way out is to confess, admit who helped him commit the crimes and settle for spending the rest of his life in a "hospital." Bigger confesses to the crime, denying his insanity and the existence of any accomplices. Buckley is joined by a "man with a pad" who records Bigger's confession and after they leave, Bigger is alone in his cell. He hears them joking outside the cell about how "easy...

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...gger explains that he neither loved nor hated her; his hate is reserved for whites mostly, because they "own every thing" and prevent him from being able to live freely. He had to kill her because "she was killing [him]." He is told to "stay in a spot" and Bigger confesses that he was simply unable to live that sort of life adding that after committing the murders, he felt a sort of freedom that he had not experienced.
Bigger focuses on the question of "What would you have liked to do, if you were allowed to?" explaining to Max that nobody had ever asked him what he wanted to do, and so he had never spent serious time contemplating a future. Bigger shouts "How can I die?" His concern is not his own physical death, but the fact that he has lived his life around people who "didn't see him" and hated him, denying him an opportunity to reveal his potential for humanity.

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