Older and modern societies tend to have organized castes and hierarchies designed to encompass everyone in society. This is demonstrated in Richard Wright’s acclaimed novel, Native Son. The novel follows the life of a twenty year old African American man named Bigger Thomas, and his experiences living as a black man in 1930s Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately, he commits two unlawful killings of women, mostly as a result of the pressure and paranoia that had been following him from a young age. He is tried and convicted of the deaths, and is sentenced to die as a result. The actions committed by Bigger could be explained by the environment he grew up in. Living in poverty all his life because of a racial hierarchy he fit at the bottom of greatly …show more content…
This is evident by the impoverished living conditions Bigger, along with other African Americans in the 1930s, had to live in, the lack of opportunities offered to African Americans, and the racial oppression African Americans, including the ones mentioned in Native Son, had to endure for many years. One reason why Richard Wright proves that economic and societal hierarchies greatly affect those living at the bottom of those hierarchies is because the bottom class tends to take on the most damage for whatever unfortunate situation its country gets in. This is exhibited in the first book of Native Son, titled Fear. In the beginning of the book, the Thomas family lives in a one bedroom, rat infested apartment in Chicago. Bigger and his younger brother, Buddy, have to turn their backs every morning to not see their mother and young sister dress. They deal with rat infestations, eviction, and poverty day by day. As the story goes on, Bigger’s mother constantly nags him about getting a job, and providing for his family. This causes Bigger to hate his family and hate his life because of the fact that they are so poor, and he can’t do anything to help them. …show more content…
This is evident at the end of book one. During the final moments of the first book, Bigger is assigned the task of bringing Mary Dalton home, after a night of drinking and shenanigans. She passes out in the car on the way home. When they get to the house, he finds that Mary is passed out in the back of the car. Bigger becomes terrified as he leads her up the stairs. He tries to ask her where her room is located, and she gestures toward hers. While they’re in the room, Bigger becomes sexually aroused and begins to grope Mary. Mrs. Dalton walks into the room while him and Mary are still inside. He panics out of fear of Mary waking up and exposing his presence in the room. He quickly covers her face with a pillow, and he tries to stay perfectly still so Mrs. Dalton does not sense two people. Mary struggles to get the pillow off, but Bigger overpowers her. He ends up accidentally killing her. The thoughts of him being caught and fired, or even being arrested under suspicion, overcame his mind. This is evident when Wright explains, “He knew that Mrs. Dalton could not see him; but he knew that if Mary spoke she would come to the side of
In Richard Wright’s Native Son, Bigger Thomas attempts to gain power over his environment through violence whenever he is in a position to do so.
Bigger often acts out of fear. This is much the case when he accidently kills Mary Dalton, the daughter of the family who has recently employed him. Mary’s death is more then just a vicious murder, however. Her death gives Bigger something that he has always wanted and never had; power. Momentarily Bigger is free of fear and feels equal to the white society.
Native son by Richard wright is a novel revolving around a young African American named bigger Thomas and his life working for the Daltons family. In a situation caught between faith and death, bigger must decide what he has to do to prove his innocence or fight after being caught in the midst of a violent act. “He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how he live the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair.” This quote describes the situation bigger and his family are in. His fears and inner demons reminding him and fighting back of where his mind is really at.
Native Son, written by Richard Wright, is a novel that is set in the 1930’s, around the time that racism was most prominent. Richard Wright focuses on the mistreatment and the ugly stereotypes that label the black man in America. Bigger Thomas, the main character is a troubled young man trying to live up the expectations of his household and also maintain his reputation in his neighborhood. Wright’s character is the plagued with low self-esteem and his lack of self-worth is reflected in his behavior and surroundings. Bigger appears to have dreams of doing better and making something of his future, but is torn because he is constantly being pulled into his dangerous and troublesome lifestyle.
During the course of the novel Mary becomes more vigorous and courageous. She is the one who takes the initiative to save her mother when Caleb loses hope. As the novel progresses she becomes more and more courageous. To sneak around and attack who used to be your best friends and defile the law takes a lot of courage. One of the greatest examples is that she will do anything to save her mother. This is shown when Mary and Caleb kill a lamb to scare Constable Dewart, “A hooded figure jumped out from behind the boulder, but instead of a human face, the head of a sheep stared at constable Dewart” (257).
Bigger’s sense of constriction and of confinement is very palpable to the reader. Wright also uses a more articulate voice to accurately describe the oppressive conditions of a Negro person. An anonymous black cellmate, a university student cries out. ” You make us live in such crowded conditions.that one out of every ten of us is insane.you dump all stale foods into the Black Belt and sell them for more than you can get anywhere else. You tax us, but you wont build hospitals.the schools are so crowded that they breed perverts.you hire us last and fire us first.”
Intro: Summary, Thesis, Highlighting main points (Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World) The tale of Native Son by Richard Wright follows the story of a young man by the name of Bigger Thomas who lives in the 1930’s. In the beginning of the story, we meet Bigger a young, angry frustrated black man who lives with his mother, brother and sister in a cramped apartment in New York. The story is narrated in a limited third-person voice that focuses on Bigger Thomas’s thoughts and feelings. The story is told almost exclusively from Bigger’s perspective. In recent years, the
In the beginning, Bigger spoke of how “I was with some boys and the police picked us up”, speaking of how he and some of his friends were arrested for a crime that they did not commit. (Wright 41) Later, Bigger was again falsely accused of a crime. This time the charge was rape on three separate occasions. The police refused to accept the possibility that Bigger was not some sort of serial rapist or criminal with numerous crimes, because he was black, he must have been a criminal.
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.
In the novel Native Son by Richard Wright, the author bestows the White social group in a belligerent manner through their racist actions, in order to bring forth the origins of racial segregation in America and how it has affected the African American society. Native Son was composed during a time influenced by the historical, cultural, and social context within the novel. Richard Wright wrote Native Son during the 1930’s when racism was predominantly stronger than ever in the Southern states. By this time Wright had heard of Hitler and how he began oppressing the Jews until fully taking power over Germany. The Nazis preoccupied themselves in constructing a society with solidarity ideas, one continuous circulation of fundamental beliefs, notions,
Racial Oppression in Native Son Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed” (BrainyQuote). Throughout history, multiple races have faced oppression and discrimination from a self-titled “dominant” race. Despite fighting for equality and resisting this harsh treatment, racism is still prevalent. The effects of this abuse negatively shapes and influences a person’s life, and drastically adds stress to their lives. In Native Son, the author Richard Wright uses Bigger Thomas as a symbol of the effects of racial oppression and what it does to the human psyche.
Near the middle of the story we see Mary exhibit her bad sinister character; her personality and feelings suddenly change when she murders her own husband by hitting him at the back of the head with a frozen lamb leg. After denying all of Mary’s helpful deeds, Patrick told her to sit down so that he can tell her something serious; the story doesn’t tell us what he says to her but Mary suddenly changes after he tells her something, her “instinct was not to believe any of it” (Dahl 2). She just responded with “I’ll get the supper” (Dahl 2) and felt nothing of her body except for nausea and a desire to vomit. She went down the cellar, opened the freezer, grabbed a frozen leg of lamb, went back upstairs, came behind Patrick, and swung the big leg of lamb as hard as she could to the back of his head killing him. This act of sudden violence shows how much she has gone ...
The reader of Native Son by Richard Wright should have some sympathy for Bigger because of the racist society he was born into and his continuous fear of himself and white people, despite the fact the he disguises his fear with anger and pride. Native Son takes place somewhere in the 1930’s around the time where the Jim Crow Laws, segregation against African-Americans, was still present and the Chicago Housing Crisis, unreasonably expensive and unsanitized housing of African-Americans after a large scale immigration from the South to the North, was still in effect. One should assume that being an African-American male in the 1930’s would be extremely difficult not only for the person but for his family too. The Chicago Housing Crisis (1902’s-1930’s) has affected Bigger and his family because they live in poor living conditions for a great quantity of money with hardly any room for all four of them, which can seriously take a toll on someone. As for the Jim Crow Laws (1865-1965)
Bigger often finds himself lashing out as a way to handle his own fear. He is afraid of not being able to help his family enough and so treats them harshly, holding “toward them an attitude of iron reserve” (10). He is afraid of holding up Blum, a white man, and so projects his own fear onto Gus. He berates him for it, calling him “‘yellow’” when he hesitates to take the job (26). Bigger has been so psychologically beat down in his own community and trained to believe that he is a lesser person that he even feels the need to get ahead amongst his own friends, fighting Gus to “feel the equal” of him (41). Yet his anger still translates most directly to the white people whom he blames for it. He describes the deep and "inarticulate hate" he feels toward Jan and Mary but cannot place the immediate cause of it. This is the partial and subconscious reason that Bigger kills Mary (67). For the first time, Bigger feels a semblance of control over his situation and over the white world that Mary represents in that moment. However, Bigger also knows very consciously that if he is discovered in her room he will be accused of rape just for being black, and so he knows his only option is to make sure he isn’t discovered. In this way, though it was not entirely on purpose, the violent act of suffocating Mary comes about as a result of Bigger’s
Bigger must then decide how to approach his impending death. That decision is the final resolution of both Book Three and the novel as a whole.