The Importance Of Segregation In Native Son By Richard Wright

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Esmeralda Lezama-Ruiz Mr.Dineen English 10 November 2015 In the 1930s everything was segregated. The colored and whites were considered extremely different. They weren’t even allowed to have the same jobs or live in the same neighborhood; Cops were only white which caused biased arrests and accusations. Cops blamed everything they could on a colored person. Richard Wright is quoted talking about how the book was set. “In the South, you use the Negro’s alleged criminality to prove that he can only be kept in order by extra-legal means, such as lynching and brutal segregation.” (Online Marxists Archives) In Native Son by Richard Wright the influence of cops and society attack a “crime” committed by a colored man and examine it. The main character, …show more content…

In Native Son by Richard Wright, that world is divided by those who have power, the whites, and those who don’t, the colored. Control and power is clearly connected with wealth. This is seen in the courthouse and in society all together. This novel shows the injustice of what power can bring. Whether someone is guilty or not, whether they suspect someone, what job people should have. To bigger society singles out who can have privileges or not and why. Bigger believes that all of the control is laid in the whites hands. Adding on to this, the control society has over him creates his shame. The shame he feels in the pit of his stomach. To him if the white society controls his emotions they control his life. This is his biggest fear and it has become his reality. When he brings Mary home drunk, after having chauffeured her and her friend around, leads him to help her to bed. This then causes him to be put in a difficult situation when her mother arrives. He covers Mary’s face with a pillow not to do harm but to quiet her; simply because of the fact that if a black man is found kissing a white lady in her bed they will assume that he raped her, he didn’t want this assumption to be made so he did what he thought was correct. Although murdering her was accidental, he is left with a messy situation. Needing to clean it up he stuffs her in the furnace. Clinging to the fear of what society would do to him for what might happen. …show more content…

Bigger’s decisions had their own snowball effects. He decided to kiss Mary, decided to unintentionally smother her, and try to hide his tracks making him a murderer. Lying to the police made him a killer on the run. Forcing his girlfriend to have sex with him gave him a different person he had to get rid of. The racial pressure and control caused him to make reckless decisions without thinking about the consequences. He believes hes alone in life but by the end of the book he realizes that his actions not only affected himself but the people around him. He hurt his mother and he made his siblings lives more difficult. He let the fear of society influence his thoughts and actions. This created how his fate was going to be chosen. It became a vicious cycle for him. Every time the fear of society got to him he reacted impulsively therefore worsening his already set fate. In Native Son by Richard Wright, it displays how society influences everyone’s decision whether good or bad. It sets the standards which no one can achieve and sets fear in the hearts of everyone in the community. The fear of society controls and challenges Bigger into being a completely different person than who he truly

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