The Theme Of Racism In Richard Wright's Native Son

1077 Words3 Pages

Bigger Thomas, a classic example of institutionalized racism, stars as the protagonist in this novel, Native Son. We are made part of his life and taken on a journey to witness his development as a character, or better defined as: an unraveling of his psyche. Consequently, Richard Wright successfully expresses the rage of the common, black-man throughout the progression of Bigger’s story. The divisions within the book (Fear, Flight, and Fate) help develop the internal turmoil that drives Bigger. Disillusioned by what the universe has dealt him, he turns to murder as his only option (Fear). Then, he begins to obsessively look for an outing (Flight), to discover there is none. Only as the novel reaches its end (Fate), does Bigger begin to experience …show more content…

Segregation marked their way of life; it was commonplace. Black people could not live in the same neighborhoods as the whites. Instead, they would be placed in a separate area called “The Black Belt”. Conditions were inhumane, and often led to its residents contracting diseases. In addition, whites would also organize groups with the purpose of preventing black people from moving into the same neighborhoods as them. This is the state of Thomas Bigger’s life when it is first introduced to us - rats, dirt, and confinement. The financial situation was so dire, that when he is offered a job working for the Daltons, Bigger can not afford to refuse it. As a result, he ends up chauffeur for the people who own his apartment complex, and who, to him, are the authors of his below-average life. Bigger is not a character to admire or look up to - the only time he shows some remotely praiseworthy characteristics are near the end. Bigger begins to realize that he can release his anger by communicating rather than exploding. Max, his lawyer, serves as a tool to help him come to terms with what he has done and express his feelings about the overall …show more content…

A direct product of the society which formed him. Bigger is an individual shaped and defined by the classic racism demonstrated by the characters in the novel. As opposed to the classic “black hero” demonstrated in other works, he represents all those stereotypes held against black men. He is undereducated, accustomed to servile labor, woefully bad at monetary management, and full of resentment towards white people. In addition, he is also increasingly violent - beginning with the apathetic attitude towards his own family and developing all the way until murder. These are some characteristics that can be seen all throughout the novel, from beginning to end. His lack of education is evident in his simplistic speech and inability to sometimes string together grammatically correct sentences. This can be inferred is the reason as to why he is “degraded” to what was considered a lowly job - a servant for the white people whom he resented so much. Furthermore, we have examples of this resentment throughout several conversations within the book, such as near the beginning he is discussing career options with Gus and exclaims, “they don’t let us do nothing”. Showing the reader how frustrated he is with his situation. Then, when he accidentally murders Mary, the excitement he feels at finally being “superior” is palpable. Through selections such as, “With eyes glazed, nerves tingling

Show More
Related

  • Analysis of Richard Wright's Native Son

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Native Son Hierarchies

    2066 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Bigger's Actions to Claim Equality in "Native Son"

    909 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the 1930’s, the black population in Chicago was a minority. Blacks, even though they were “free men”, were actually trapped within the grasps of white society. Richard Wrights character Bigger is very much influenced by this way of life. In the early stages of Native Son, Bigger is angry at white society because he feels that he is powerless. However, as the novel progresses, the tables turn and Bigger, essentially, holds all the power.

    Read More

  • The Role Of Racism In James Baldwin's Notes Of A Native Son

    1117 Words  | 3 Pages

    Racism has existed through the world for centuries and has been the primary reason for numerous conflicts, wars and other human tragedies all over the planet. From 16th to 19th-century blacks were taken from their homes and families and taken for the slave trade. They were often overworked, beaten and killed. Being black was not the best thing you could be in 1950’s. Racism is not something that is inborn, it is what people created. In the article, “We’re all racist. But racism by white people matters more”, Mona Chalabi says “I don’t think white people are born with some sort of racism gene – the main thing that explains those different scores is the way that society has geared up our brains differently.” It is our society that is ignorant,

    Read More

  • Native Son Fear Quotes

    1265 Words  | 3 Pages

    Native Son, written by Richard Wright in a naturalist lens, is novel about an impoverished, ignorant black male, called Bigger Thomas whose life goes in downward spiral after he kills Mary Dalton, the daughter of the millionaire, white family he works for. Naturalists, like Wright, believe that people do not have agency over their lives and society, so their outcomes are predetermined. This novel is set in the city of Chicago in the late 1930s, where segregation laws divide the blacks and whites, and give the blacks fewer opportunities than the whites. Book One of Native Son, called Fear, is about Bigger’s growing fear and anger towards society and how that affects the way he acts toward the people around him. One night, Bigger and Mary came home drunk.

    Read More

  • Racism in Richard Wright's Black Boy

    869 Words  | 2 Pages

    Racism in Wright's Black Boy The theme of Richard Wright's autobiography Black Boy is racism. Wright grew up in the deep South; the Jim Crow South of the early twentieth century. From an early age Richard Wright was aware of two races, the black and the white. Yet he never understood the relations between the two races.

    Read More

  • Richard Wright's Big Boy Leaves Home

    2258 Words  | 5 Pages

    Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home” confronts a young black person’s forced maturation at the hands of unsympathetic whites. Through his almost at times first person descriptions, Wright makes Big Boy a hero to us. Big Boy hovers between boyhood and adulthood throughout the story, and his innocence is lost just in time for him to survive. Singled out for being larger than his friends, he is the last to stand, withstanding bouts with white men, a snake, and a dog, as we are forced to confront the different levels of nature and its inherent violence.

    Read More

  • Devoya Draft

    1250 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...ed. He had to cover his eyes and his mother and sister dress out of respect. To understand Bigger is to understand his mindset, and I agree with the critic when he goes to explain there is nothing to do with the environment but the way that you react with being in that environment. Biggers hardship truly made it easier to understand the way that a black male thinks while not have a male role model or support from your mother in these times encouraging him to be the best man that he can but being hard on him to be the man that she believed that men of Biggers race she be, act and the thing that Bigger does. Everything has a reason but once you’re pushed to the edge there is nothing left to do but jump of move aside and let the other person fall. In this case Bigger fell because his mind wasn’t strong enough to understand that he could go about things differently.

    Read More

  • Refutation: The Story of Bigger Thomas ( Native Son )

    1133 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Darryl Pinckney’s discerning critical essay, “Richard Wright: The Unnatural History of a Native Son,” Pinckney states that all of Wright’s books contain the themes of violence, inhumanity, rage, and fear. Wright writes about these themes because he expresses, in his books, his convictions about his own struggles with racial oppression, the “brutal realities of his early life.” Pinckney claims that Wright’s works are unique for Wright’s works did not attempt to incite whites to acknowledge blacks. Wright does not write to preach that blacks are equal to whites. The characters in Wright’s works, including Bigger Thomas from Native Son, are not all pure in heart; the characters have psychological burdens and act upon their burdens. For instance, Bigger Thomas, long under racial oppression, accidentally suffocates Mary Dalton in her room for fear that he will be discriminated against and charged with the rape of Mary Dalton. Also, according to Pinckney, although the characters of Wright’s books are under these psychological burdens, they always have “futile hopes [and] desires.” At the end of Native Son, Bigger is enlightened by the way his lawyer Max treats him, with the respect of a human being. Bigger then desires nothing but to live, but he has been sentenced to death.

    Read More

  • Control of the Black Man in Richard Wright's, Native Son

    647 Words  | 2 Pages

    Bigger is consumed with fear and anger for whites because racism has limited his options in life and has subjected him and his family into poverty-stricken communities with little hope for change. The protagonist is ashamed of his family’ dark situation and is afraid of the control whites have over his life. His lack of control over his life makes him violent and depressed, which makes Bigger further play into the negative stereotypes that put him into the box of his expected role in a racist society. Wright beautifully displays the struggle that blacks had for identity and the anger blacks have felt because of their exclusion from society. Richard Wright's Native Son displays the main character's struggle of being invisible and alienated in an ignorant and blatantly racist American society negatively influenced by the "white man".

    Read More

  • Injustice In Native Son

    1401 Words  | 3 Pages

    Recognizing the injustice of it all, Bigger declines their offer without any hesitation. Bigger has always seemed to be frightful of tragedy striking, no matter where he may be at the time, if he knew white people were going to be within his area. During Native Son, Bigger tells his friend Gus that, “every time I get to think about me being black and they being white, me being here and they being there, I feel like something awful’s going to happen to me”(Wright 23). Not being able to fully explain to Gus, but Bigger could not shake the feeling of powerlessness that he has always seemed to have. To, “Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one’s feet in the dark”(Wright 109). Gus still insisted there was nothing that he could possibly do about it leaving Bigger to accept the outcome. When Bigger Thomas committed the crime of murder, the opposing community used this offense to further advocate their “figment of a black world which they feared and were anxious to keep under control”(Wright 257). The people in authority used Bigger as an example against all other black people. They wanted African Americans to witness that they could not have the same legal liabilities as white people

    Read More

  • Bigger Thomas as America’s Native Son

    1231 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the novel the Native Son, the author Richard Wright explores racism and oppression in American society. Wright skillfully merges his narrative voice into Bigger Thomas so that the reader can also feel how the pressure and racism affects the feelings, thoughts, self-image, and life of a Negro person. Bigger is a tragic product of American imperialism and exploitation in a modern world. Bigger embodies one of humankind’s greatest tragedies of how mass oppression permeates all aspects of the lives of the oppressed and the oppressor, creating a world of misunderstanding, ignorance, and suffering.

    Read More

  • Native Son Rhetorical Analysis

    751 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Sympathy for a Murderer in Richard Wright's Native Son

    1011 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Style, Point of View, Form and Structure of Native Son, by Richard Wright

    1087 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his novel, Native Son, Richard Wright favors short, simple, blunt sentences that help maintain the quick narrative pace of the novel, at least in the first two books. For example, in the following passage: "He licked his lips; he was thirsty. He looked at his watch; it was ten past eight. He would go to the kitchen and get a drink of water and then drive the car out of the garage. " Wright's imagery is often brutal and elemental, as seen in his frequently repeated references to fire, snow, and Mary's bloody head.

    Read More

More about The Theme Of Racism In Richard Wright's Native Son

Open Document