Justice In The Native Son

The book The Native Son by Richard Wright, portrays an African American man, named Bigger Thomas, who lived in Chicago in the early 1900’s. Bigger is faced with the challenge of poverty and the dominance of white people. In the setting, African Americans do menial work for little pay. Bigger strives to live a normal life, but is hindered by white supremacy. Bigger throughout the story is exasperated by the white population, who he feels have an unfair advantage over him. Black people in Bigger’s time, were regularly unjustly accused of crimes by white people, just because of their skin color. However Bigger is served justice as he does not fall under this category as he truly did commit murder more than once and is rightfully sentenced to death.

The Story starts off by showing the reader that Biggers family is poor and doesn’t have a very well living condition. They all lived in a single room, which is infested rodent like the rat that Bigger attempted to kill, “There he is! The mother screamed again. A huge black rat squealed and leaped at Bigger”(pg5). As you can see in this scene Bigger is living in a very horrific apartment as result of his family’s poverty

The police start looking for him as they found Mary’s bones in the furnace, where Bigger left her remains. Bigger goes into hiding with his girlfriend Bessie Mears, an alcoholic black women. They find an abandoned apartment to hide from the police while they figure things out. This is the point where Bigger realizes that Bessie is more of a liability than an ally. He then contemplates that he needs to kill her. Bigger than rapes Bessie, as she falls asleep Bigger remembers that he saw a two bricks near him. He then beats her skull with a brick to the point of her death, then throws her body down an air shaft. This is classified as first degree murder as he planned the murder then went through with it, which is punishable by death in some