Sympathy is an important aspect of human nature. Without it, the entire human race would be overcome with tyrants; however, it is also a major downfall of society. Sometimes, people undeserving of the sympathy of others still attain it unjustly. This is the case of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son. Although some may argue that it was merely his response to the conditions in which he lived, Bigger does not deserve the sympathy those people give him because all colored people were oppressed, he had people supporting him, and he was clearly violent from the start and enjoyed the kill. First, in the time period in which Bigger lived, all black people were living in the same oppressive conditions, but they did not all lash out in socially and morally unacceptable behavior like he did. For example, the city in which Bigger lived, Chicago, is huge. There were at least hundreds of others living in similar, if not worse, conditions to those in which Bigger and his family lived. What did they do? They toughed it out, dealt with it, worked hard, did what they could, and did it all without sawing a girl's head off and blaming it on a man that loved her. In addition, some actually overcame the obstacles set forth, such as the Dalton's previous chauffeur, Green, who went to night school. As a result, he acquired a government job. Why did Green go to night school? Mrs. Dalton gave him the opportunity and pushed him to reach his potential out of her concern for the less fortunate (Wright 56). Moreover, Mrs. Dalton wanted to give Bigger the chance to further his education through night school, like Green. Bigger had people, like Mrs. Dalton, supporting him, which was a luxury many colored people probably did not possess. Mr. Dalton was... ... middle of paper ... ...ineteen hundreds. Back in the 1930’s, when this book took place, the white community influenced how African Americans acted because the whites always ridiculed them and always put them down and made them feel like they were nothing but a piece of property. For example, when the white people made the blacks pick cotton or when they only refer to them as 3/5 a person or by not giving them any rights. Being treated like this had to have had a negative effect on how they lived there lives. It made them more precautious around people, more curious about people, and made them have a sense that they wanted to feel what it was like to be loved and respected. So Bigger was just a model of what growing up with negative surroundings can do to you. Bigger is not a threat, the negative surroundings were what the real threat was, and people still today need to realize this point.
Bigger Thomas wasn’t just one man but every man Richard Wright, the writer of Native Son, had encounter in his childhood and adulthood. Wright had encountered a nice Bigger, violent Bigger, and a Bigger Thomas who hated the white society. He combined all of these Thomases and created Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Bigger filled with enrage and fear of the whites accidentally kills a white woman and tries to run away, but only to end in a prison cell waiting for his punishment. Bigger’s definition of himself and the white society had limited his possibilities of having a greater future but Bigger could have went to the right path if he had controlled himself and his choicies.
The book Native Son by Richard Wright is about an African American man growing up in the south. The main character Bigger Thomas often finds himself in trouble throughout his life from the beginning to the end. The author uses his views and thoughts through Bigger about American society. Bigger worked for a rich man named Mr. Dalton and had “accidentally” murdered his daughter Mary. As a result of that a domino effect of misfortune began to happen. Bigger was later arrested and put on trial because of his actions I felt like I was watching a man sinking through quicksand and with every movement or attempt to free himself making the situation worst. He only murder because fear of getting caught in her room, a white woman’s room. Mary was drunk and the Dalton’s would have thought Bigger was trying rape her or something. It was very distressing that Mary had to die but Bigger was only doing what he thought at the time was right.
This concept of hatred spreads past, even the bounds of individuality. Notably, this collective hatred shows in the moment the mob comes by the Jailhouse to lynch Tom Robinson, for a crime that he has not even been found guilty of by a court. This attitude and contempt stemming from the collective hatred of the mob. This proves itself to be more true when looking at the definition of the collective unconscious, which “is a level of unconscious shared with other members of the human species comprising latent memories from our ancestral and evolutionary past.”(McLeod). The men who are coming by to lynch Tom are doing so because he is not like them. He is black. In the end, it takes a little girl to calm them. Atticus says “That proves something—that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they’re still human.”(Lee 210). Their rage and anger directed collectively towards Tom Robinson is only quelled by remembering their own individual humanity. This scene incorporates the sense of bigotry that encompasses the whole mob, while having it quelled by the aspect of enlightenment through the understanding of an individual’s humanity. Ultimately this illustrates the inherent ability to grow out of groupthink and into an individual understanding and power for goodness.
As Bigger is trying to dispose of Mary’s body he questions if he should just run away. Bigger knows that “he could not. He must not. He had to burn this girl” (Wright 92). Bigger is aware that he has to get rid of Mary’s body for the same reason he had to kill her. Once Mrs. Dalton walked into Mary’s room, her white presence caused Bigger to act based on how society would react. Bigger knew that if he had been found in a room alone with a white girl he would be killed. From what Bigger knew about white society he would be killed if was caught in the room alone with Mary. He was put in a positon by society that left him no other option but to kill. Bigger knew that no matter the circumstances, the crime would fall on him because “he was black and had been alone in a room where a white girl had been killed; therefore he had killed her” (Wright 106). Whether his crime was accidental or not he knew that because of the image given to black people, especially black men, in the community that the blame would be put on him. In the room that night, both Bigger and Mary were only reacting in the way that society had expected them to. They were not individuals anymore, they represented the more powerful forces of the black and white society, acting as they had been told to. Bigger was unable to defend himself because society had already determined death as his
The life of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son is not one with which most of us can relate. It is marked by excessive violence, oppression, and a lack of hope for the future. Despite this difference from my own life and the lives of my privileged classmates, I would argue that Bigger's experience is somewhat universal, His is not a unique, individual experience, but rather one that is representative of the world of a young black man. If Bigger were alive today, perhaps he would be a “Gangsta Rapper” and express his rage through music instead of violence.
Prejudice is a cancer that spreads hate among its perpetrators and victims alike. In 1930 Langston Hughes penned the novel, Not Without Laughter. This powerful story, written from the perspective of an African-American boy named James “Sandy” Rodgers, begins in the early 1900’s in the small town of Stanton, Kansas. Through the eyes of young Sandy, we see the devastating impact of racism on his family and those they are close to. We also see how the generations of abuse by whites caused a divide within the black community. Among, and even within, black families there were several social classes that seemed to hinge on seeking equality through gaining the approval of whites. The class someone belonged to was determined by the color of their skin, the type of church one attended, their level of education, and where an individual was able to find work.
The theme that Native Son author Richard Wright puts in this story is that the white community makes Bigger act the way he does, that through the communities actions, Bigger does all the things he is accused of doing. The theme that I present is that Bigger only acts the way that he did because of the influences that the white community has had on him accepted by everyone. When Bigger gets the acceptance and love he has always wanted, he acts like he does not know what to do, because really, he does not. In Native Son, Bigger uses his instincts and acts like the white people around him have formed him to act. They way that he has been formed to act is to not trust anyone. Bigger gets the acceptance and love he wanted from Mary and Jan, but he still hates them and when they try to really get to know him, he ends up hurting them. He is scared of them simply because he has never experienced these feelings before, and it brings attention to him from himself and others. Once Bigger accidentally kills Mary, he feels for the first time in his life that he is a person and that he has done something that somebody will recognize, but unfortunately it is murder. When Mrs. Dalton walks in and is about to tell Mary good night, Bigger becomes scared stiff with fear that he will be caught committing a crime, let alone rape. If Mrs. Dalton finds out he is in there he will be caught so he tries to cover it up and accidentally kills Mary. The police ask why he did not just tell Mrs. Dalton that he was in the room, Bigger replies and says he was filled with so much fear that he did not know what else to do and that he did not mean to kill Mary. He was so scared of getting caught or doing something wrong that he just tried to cover it up. This is one of the things that white people have been teaching him since he can remember. The white people have been teaching him to just cover things up by how the whites act to the blacks. If a white man does something bad to a black man the white man just covers it up a little and everything goes back to normal.
Pinckney praises Native Son as a powerful intellectual book that deals with issues of racism and oppression. He says explicitly that it is the most powerful book, but it is unclear what domain of books Pinckney is comparing Native Son with. Pinckney refutes James Baldwin’s statement about Native Son, saying that Bigger Thomas is not a mere stereotype, but an example of a stressed black boy of the racially segregated American society during the 1930s. It is true that Bigger Thomas is a victim of a racially segregated society.
The effects of racism can cause an individual to be subjected to unfair treatment and can cause one to suffer psychological damage and harbor anger and resentment towards the oppressor. Bigger is a twenty year old man that lives in a cramped rat infested apartment with his mother and 2 younger siblings. Due to the racist real estate market, Bigger's family has only beat down dilapidated projects of south side Chicago to live in. poor and uneducated, bigger has little options to make a better life for him and his families. having been brought up in 1930's the racially prejudice America, bigger is burdened with the reality that he has no control over his life and that he cannot aspire to anything more than menial labor as an servant. Or his other option which are petty crimes with his gang.
Bigger Thomas feels trapped long before he is incarcerated for killing Mary Dalton. He is trapped in an overpriced apartment with his family and trapped in a white world he has no hope of changing. He knows that he is predisposed to receiving unfair treatment because he is black, but he still always feels as though he is headed for an unpleasant end. The three sections that make up the novel Native Son by Richard Wright, “Fear,” “Flight” and “Fate,” imply a continuous and pervasive cycle throughout Bigger’s life that ultimately leads him to murder.
.... This factor ties in another theme of the novel, oppression. The novel informs the readers of how the African- American culture felt oppressed by the color of their skins and their status on the economic spectrum.
Nowhere in this novel can the reader see a greater example of Bigger’s fear and sense of constriction than in the accidental death of Mary Dalton. The all-encompassing fear that the white world has bred in Bigger takes over when he is in Mary’s room and in danger of being discovered by Mrs. Dalton. This internalized social oppression literally forces his hands to hold the pillow over Mary’s face, suffocating her. Bigger believes that a white person would assume that he was in the room to rape the white girl.
...hool every day, whilst the white school bus goes past and sprays them with red dust. This also shows segregation, whites and blacks had to be as far apart as possible according to the whites. In the novel we see segregation many times: when Big Ma parks the wagon the other side of the field, the different schools and different buses. Taylor does use strong and powerful language through her characters and events to portray the racism. She also had a clear structure, some may find it confusing at times, but overall it does not affect how prejudice is portrayed as events follow each other. I think that the final message of the novel, perhaps, is that survival is possible, but that there are inevitable losses along the way, and that whatever race we are should not matter. Taylor uses memorable characters and big and small events to show prejudice in 1930?s Mississippi.
In the heated trial that determines whether Bigger Thomas will live or die, his supportive defense attorney exclaims, “You cannot kill this man, your Honor, for we have made it plain that we do not recognize that he lives!” Living in the Chicago slums as a poor, uneducated young black man whose only confidence can come from acts of violence, Bigger Thomas of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son is destined to meet a poor fate. Anger and hopelessness are a daily reality for him as he realizes that his life has no real meaning. When he accidentally murders a young, rich, white woman, however, his actions begin to have meaning as he accepts the crime as his own, even while he lies to the authorities. Bigger is, of course, taken down by a society who takes offense at the remarks of his supporters and seeks to justify itself. Bigger himself is doomed, but his emotions, his actions, and his motivations all help to give the reader a window into the mind of a criminal and a repressed inner city African American.
In Native Son, Richard Wright introduces Bigger Thomas, a liar and a thief. Wright evokes sympathy for this man despite the fact that he commits two murders. Through the reactions of others to his actions and through his own reactions to what he has done, the author creates compassion in the reader towards Bigger to help convey the desperate state of Black Americans in the 1930’s.