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an analysis of native son
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Native Son Analysis Essay
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In Native Son by Richard Wright, Mr. Wright lived in the 1930s and experienced how African Americans were unfairly treated and the extreme poverty that still happens in South Side Chicago. The way Mr. Wright grew up into all the poverty, violence, and being discriminated against placed himself into Bigger Thomas shoes and how handled everything the way he was living with despair. That’s how Mr. Wright sets a psychoanalytic theory in his writing of how he portrays Bigger Thomas, he is self-conscious of his actions and how he wishes to hurt some but doesn’t believe he can bring himself to do that. Bigger Thomas despises the way he lives and how the white people have control over his life but sooner or later he does something that makes him feel superior and equal to a white person. In Native Son Book One Fear: We can infer that Bigger Thomas has suppressed many feeling and feels uneasiness about his own thoughts. Bigger was just afraid of his own thoughts to not be able to express and physically do what he wished to do creating fear within himself. So now that Bigger has let go of that fear by murdering someone he feels like he has power to do whatever he wants since black people are overlooked he believes that no one will suspect him. “Above the top of the poster were tall red letters: YOU CANT WIN!” The attorneys are putting up the poster saying that you can never run away from the law especially if you have broken the law. In a way this quote is a foreshadow because of what Bigger will do to that white girl making him fell superior since no one will know the big crime he has committed. You can and will never get away for whatever crime you have done because in the end you will end up paying for it one way or the ... ... middle of paper ... ...person has reacted very intense and will start hitting hard into the black community hunting down this Negro and bring him to justice. This book Native Son Mr. Wright was inspired with his own surrounding living in the South Side of Chicago in the 1930s and living into a very poor and despair place where Negros had no one to defend them or help them. Mr. Wright was mostly encouraged by one of the Chicago News Paper of how a young Negro murdered a white a white girl with a brick. He then made it possible to place himself to kill someone and let their destiny come true. This story was a very eye opening because as we speak there is injustice still happening today, there are many people suffering for a murdered they did not commit and most of these people might be black or any ethnicity or race being blamed for a crime.
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.
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.
After analyzing a few synopses of Richard Wright’s works, it is clear that he used violence to make his political statements. It is not just the actions of Wright’s characters in The Native Son and Uncle Tom’s Children that are violent; in many cases, Wright himself seems very sensitive to any sort of racial provocation. In The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, he details a few of his encounters with racial oppression. Many of them feature violence, and his reflections of his experiences become less and less emotional, almost as of this was all he had come to expect from whites.
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.
In Native Son, the character Bigger Thomas is highly oppressed and treated as an outcast in society. This relationship with society is nearly identical to that of the creature in Frankenstein. Bigger Thomas did not choose which race he would be born as, nor did he chose to live in a time of oppression. Despite all this, Bigger is still treated as inferior to white people all throughout the novel. After being raised in an environment in which he was told he would never be able to amount to his dreams, Bigger eventually stretches past his limits and becomes enraged. He uses his anger to rationalize his view of the accidental murder of Mary Dalton. When Bigger’s girlfriend tells him that he will be accused of raping Mary, Bigger thinks:
Bigger Thomas is a twenty year old black man who lives in a cramped, rat- infested apartment with his family. Already from the beginning it can be seen his inadequacy through his home life and other actions. "A huge back rat squealed and leaped at Bigger's trouser- leg and snagged it in his teeth, hanging on" (Wright 5). The black people in the community were forced to live in impoverished neighborhoods, the South Side, with pitiful resources and goods, and limited opportunity for education. Bigger had lived a life defined by fear and anger toward the whites who overpower him. He and his friends commit crimes, but only against other blacks; the group ...
Richard Wright believed that all humans are a product of their environment and when this environment oppresses any member, there is physical and psychological devastation (Wright, 1940, p. 6).” The ghetto, though no longer assumed to create pathological social conditions today did, however aid in the pathological, or deviant behavior of many African Americans in the late nineteenth century. Some psychologists would argue that, the ghettos of today in the United States do in fact still have devastating impacts on African American youth. In Wright’s novel, The Native Son, the protagonist, Bigger Thomas and his single mother, younger brother and sister reside in a one-bedroom apartment in Chicago’s South Side Black Belt. Throughout the course of the novel, it is evident to the reader that Bigger’s
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.
"To be delegated into the HSF Alumni Hall of Fame would be an honor any reasonable person would appreciate. As for me, it is more than the dignity it carries or even the reputation the award it might give off. It is about the responsibility I now carry for my fellow descendants, to give them the dream to pursue their lives and live up to the confrontations of life."
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. 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 families’ 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".
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.
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 the novel Native Son by Richard Wright, the final plea of Mr. Max regarding the trial of Bigger Thomas is very important as it encompasses the main theme of oppression and its importance to the United States on a monumental scale. Mr. Max analyzes the life of Bigger Thomas in the way the author intends it to be seen, as a symbol of the lives of the 12 million African Americans living in the United States at that time. The passionate speech by Mr. Max covers the theme of blindness, and how the white populace uses it to shield themselves from guilt. Also, he uses an extended metaphor to depict how the ghettos merely fuelled the oppression and crime of the city. Similarly to the containment of the blacks in ghettos he mentions the lack of expression and freedom, which connects to important symbols mentioned earlier in the novel. The passionate and urgent tone to the speech also shows promise for the future as Max makes his heartfelt speech in hopes of change for an oppressed people.
He comes from the lowest rung of the American social and economic ladder. Due to his lack of education he been relegated to menial labor, thus making him feel trapped the entirety of his life, resenting, hating and fearing white people who have defined the narrow confines of his existence. Bigger doesn’t view white people as individuals to fear, but rather a collective, overwhelming force that tells him what to do, where to live, where to work, etc. “’man’ has typically been, if not synonymous with “white,” then very closely aligned with it. Nevertheless, Wright seems to hold out some hope for a manhood unmarked by race. Native Son’s hero Bigger Thomas is one of millions “whose existence ignored racial and national lines” (Wright, “How Bigger” 446)” (Matthews 277). Said makes the same argument about Western society’s domination of Eastern cultures. He argues that much of the Western world’s study of the Islamic civilization was political intellectualism meant more for Europe’s self-affirmation, rather than for the objective intellectual questioning and academic study of the Easter cultures. Because of this, Orientalism functioned as a method of practical and cultural discrimination applied as a sort of imperial domination, claiming that the Western Orientalist knows more about the Orient than the actual Orientals. Western society only studied about the Orient so that they could lay claim that the Orientals living in their lands know more about their own history and cultures because they now live in a more educated world. Wright reiterates this argument in Native Son, where the whites have dominated the western society, claiming that they know exactly how the black culture functions and should function because they have been dealing with them from the beginning of America. Bigger is only a product of his culture, because the whites have created him to be the monster they expect him to be. This is the same though that
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.