In the turn of the century, the time of Bigger Thomas, the roles of black men and women in America were heavily restricted compared to the white population. Black people were also still treated unequally and dealt with as ignorant fools. Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, embraces this knowledge and follows the reaction of one angry man as he manages the delights of his exploits and the consequences of his deeds. Challenging pressures and stereotypes, Bigger believes he understands the world and that he is completely in control, unperturbed by anything or anyone. Although he is blind to society in essence, Bigger is deeply influenced by his oppression, exemplified by his actions, escape, and eventual demise.
From the beginning, Bigger is a visibly shaken young man, extremely fearful of the society in which he is forced to inhabit. While a cowardly lion at heart, he often bares his teeth, shows his claws, and occasionally growls to save face, all in an effort to prove to his friends and peers that he is not, in fact, scared of his life. This is plainly illustrated when his friend Gus says, "You see, Bigger, you the cause of all the trouble we ever have. Ain't I got a right to make up my mind? Naw; that ain't your way. You start cussing. You say I'm scared. It's you who's scared!" (Wright 28). Bigger's immediate defense is, as Gus predicted, to shout and threaten until he has satisfied himself for the time being that he truly is not afraid of anything. Bigger is, however, intensely terrified of life because he wholeheartedly believes that he has no destiny. He begins to resent himself for this belief and thrusts the blame to everyone else in the world but himself, allowing himself to have faith in the ...
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...ding of his crime and of his importance in life to his family, no matter what the whole of society believes. By grasping this idea, Bigger's life can end in the satisfaction that he does have a foreseeable destiny and that his death is justified. His individuality and his fate have been what Bigger and people in his position have been groping for their entire lives and knowing this, Bigger can in essence rest in peace, for his life is no longer incomplete or insignificant.
Works Cited
Collier-Thomas, John; et al. Chronology of the Civil Rights Movement. Chicago, IL: Henry Holt & Company, Inc., January 2000.
Neskahi, Arlie. "Anger Cycle Model." February 2003, 1998. http://www.rainbowwalker.com/anger/cycle.html
Wright, Richard. Native Son. 1940. New York, NY: First Perennial Classics, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
Throughout the history of writing, cats have symbolized craftiness, misfortune, deceit and death. Richard Wright creates no exception to this reputation in his novel Native Son. Bigger Thomas, a young, depressed black man, is placed in an awkward position when he is interviewed for a job with the Daltons, a wealthy white family. The Dalton's unnamed white cat, gazes at Bigger, symbolizing initially white society. This gazing causes Bigger to feel angry and awkward so that is comes to assume a far more critical symbolic level on the night of Mary Dalton's murder. His feelings lead him to express himself overtly in violence, specifically Bigger's killing of Mary. In effect, the Dalton's cat kills Mary.
Bigger is a young black man living in the Southside of Chicago with his mother and two younger siblings. His family lives in a one room apartment, leaving little space for privacy. After being awoken by the sudden clang of an alarm clock, the Thomas’s start their day like every other before it. As the family is getting dressed a large rat runs into the room, causing chaos. Bigger trapped the rat in a box, giving it no way to escape. Looking at Bigger “the rat’s belly pulsed with fear. Bigger advanced a step and the rat emitted a long thin song of defiance, its black beady eyes glittering” (Wright 6). The fear that pulses in the belly of the rat is the same fear that runs through Bigger. Bigger is trapped within the physical walls of his run-down apartment and the city lines that the white society has put around the Chicago Black Belt. Bigger and the black community have no choice or way to escape. The confinement of these areas causes Bigger to feel confusion and anger towards those who have put him
Bigger's first encounter with a rat foreshadows what will happen to him later on in the story and explains his reaction to danger. ?The rat automatically becomes a natural enemy and an invader the moment it is discovered in Bigger's apartment? (Hakutani 41). Bigger's family is instantly afraid of the rat and demands its destruction. Buddy blocks the entrance to the rat's home, leaving the rat trapped in the room with no escape. Finally, the rat becomes frenzied and resorts to violence to protect itself from Bigger and Buddy. "The rat squeaked and turned and ran in a narrow circle, looking for a place to hide; it leaped again past Bigger and scurried on dry rasping feet to one side of the box and then to the other, searching for the hole. Then it turned and reared upon its hind legs" (Wright 4). Initially, the rat is shown as helpless, with no intent to hurt Bigger. The rat's fight for its survival becomes so desperate, however, that it leaps at Bigger's pant leg in an attempt to protect itself.
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.
Due to the way Bigger views whites, his motivation for killing Mary is that it serves him a higher purpose. The fact that Mary is white, is mainly what triggers Bigger to feel shame and fear. You’ve got to remember, Bigger views whites people as a great big natural white force. Considering that Bigger killed Mary and gets away with it, gives him gives him a sense of pride because he can act one way while still doing what he pleases. He believes that killing Mary accounts for all things that the white force has done to him and that is his key to motivation.
Of all of the issues that effect the planet Earth from a Global Change standpoint, one of the most visible and highly publicized is the issue of rainforest destruction. The loss of this emerald on the planet's crown will end life as we know it, if something is not done...
The Amazon Rain Forest Is in Danger of Being Destroyed" by Devadas Vittal. Rain Forests. HaiSong Harvey, Ed. At Issue Series. Greenhaven Press, 2002. Reprinted from Devadas Vittal, Introduction: What Is the Amazon Rainforest? Internet: http://www.homepages.go.com/homepages/d/v/i/dvittal/amazon/intro.html, November 1999, by permission of the author. http://ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=false&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=normal&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010021212&mode=view
As destruction of the rainforest continues, man slowly paves the inevitable path to a clear end. It has been known that the rainforest is an essential provider for the balance of the mother earth and that it acts as a key for life as we know it. Yet, the world still decides to quietly watch the disappearance. In fact, most people realize what exactly is taking place. But however, instead of trying to aid in the termination of this disaster. They place this into the back of their ignorant little minds thinking that it will not directly effect them. Every day the removal continues, it actually occurs extremely fast and at a pace of 80 acres per minute. That means at 80 acres per minute with 60 minutes per hour and 24 hours a day, there is a loss of approximately 115,000 acres a day. This is an exorbitant amount forest loss in one day meaning that at this pace hastened by the roadrunner ethics, that the forest will not have a place in the environment for very long. The fact is that now is the time to voice your opinion before and act it is too late.
When there is a lage amount of acid rain that falls in an area over a period of time, it can hurt the environment for all of the creatures living there. Acid rain can make a lake acidic which will most likely kill off a majority of the animals living in that lake.(McCormick 16) This happens all over the world. Michael Hopkin a reporter, and the author of “Acid rain still hurting Canada” states that, “Lakes and waterways in North America are struggling to recover from the effects of acid rain, despite reduced emissions of the pollutants that cause it. Without further cuts, it could be millennia before the worst-affected sites recover, say environmentalists.” It can also kill the animals that depend on the lake for food. When a food source that animals in an area dependon to survive gets diminished or even eliminated altogether. The animals that depended on it will either die off which will cause an even bigger problem for that area 's ecosystem, or they will need to find a new food source.If the new food that the animal found is already a food source for another animal then that causes competition for food, this may reduce the numbers of one or maybe even both animals. This all can come about because of acid rain and what it can do to the environment. On the EPA student site they have an article that shows how acid rain can affect an ecosystem 's food web. “This process continues up the entire food web. So,
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.
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.
Acid rain affects many things in our world greatly. Acid rain is precipitation that has been released into the atmosphere and is very harmful and can do lots of damage.
The alienation of Bigger Thomas leads to his character development. He is primitive, fearful, and quick tempered because of the isolation and racism he faces. He is created by the society that he lives in; the environment surrounding him leads to his downfall. Bigger knows that he was dead from the day he was born, the “blind” people around him are either too fearful or ignorant to see it. He knows that what he has accidentally done can never be justified to whites; he wants to die knowing he is equal to his counterparts.
Rainforests once covered 14% of the worlds land surface, however now it only covers a mere 6%. It is estimated that all rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. Trees are becoming more needed and used everyday. We need them cut down for many reasons such as paper and timber, while also needing them ‘untouched’ for other reasons like oxygen, we have to ask ourselves, which is more important? At the current rate, most of the rainforests are being cut down for resources like paper and timber, but less importance is being placed on main resources like oxygen.
These important questions on the topic of children’s television viewing in its early beginnings continue to be debated in society. The creation of children’s television shows in the 1940s and 1950s offered children pure entertainment and very little smart education. According to Palmer, “there were a few shows that did teach children values and morals, but the true educational television shows for children did not appear until the late 1960s(28). Not only educational shows, but public television shows, dialogue, help in increasing a child’s vocabulary and in improving he/she speaking skills. Therefore, parents should encourage their children to watch more public television today because public television helps children to read.