In The Overwhelming, Mizinga says to Jack, "One is defined by what one is against. And who. To struggle against these people, to fight for what is yours. To suffer and yet to struggle on: This is what makes life precious. And brings understanding (p 76-77)". Within the three novels that will be discussed in this essay, the aforementioned quote highlights the dilemma that each protagonist faces on his way from innocence to maturation (word choice). In The Overwhelming, the protagonist, Jack travels to Rwanda during the onset of the Rwandan genocide. In search of his friend, Dr. Gansana, Jack learns that the workings of Rwanda is nothing like his home country, and experiences firsthand the brutality that would occur over the following weeks. He must make a decision between his son and his friend, and ultimately chooses his son, leading to the death of his friend. The Innocent, by Ian McEwan, Leonard, a sheltered adult, travels to a post World War 2 German for work. He encounters games of espionage, and what can be called love. This connection takes him from adolescence to maturation, to the point where he inadvertently commits murder. Lastly, Native Son, by Richard Wright, tells the story of Bigger, an African American youth, who faces external strife from his immediate environment. In a racially discriminating America, Bigger commits murder and is freed. He goes from being inhibited and beaten down by his environment, to attain a sense of freedom. With this said, all these men encounter murder, whether the decisions made were deliberate or inadvertent. While their reactions are different, it can be seen that murder transforms their innocence or contributes to the loss of it.
In The Overwhelming, Jack Exley enters Rwanda with inte...
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...k man in America. While he also kills Bessie, she has less of an effect because she is African American as well. Despite this, Bigger still commits murder. Fletcher states, "You are liable for murder if (1) you act (2) intentionally (3) to bring about the death of (4) a living human being, and you are not acting in (5) self-defense or while (6) insane (Fletcher, 97)”. In Bigger’s case, he is guilty for both murders. The murder of Mary was accidental but he disposed of her body in brutal fashion. This fashion however was out of fear of being caught. Because of the racial difference, it was very likely that Bigger would get in trouble for being caught with Mary, if not worse, lynched. His murder of Bessie revolved around the fact that she may have given him away to the police. With this said, it is clear these murders revolve around the fear of being caught.
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 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.
Ordinary People is a book that examines the life of a typical American family that seems to have it all together. It exposes the major conflicts among them; pain, misunderstanding, hurt, forgiveness, and ultimately if possible healing. Conrad - with the story told mostly through his perspective, he being the one furthering the resulting course of events and at the same time the protagonist and antagonist ? is the main character of the story. While boating on a lake with his older brother, a fierce gale picks up capsizing their boat and eventually leading to the death of his brother when he drowns. A failed suicide attempt by Conrad reveals how much he blames himself for the tragic turn of events and the lack of communication between him and his parents. The process of healing is painfully slow till the end. Conrad visits a psychiatrist, the conflict with his mother continues to grow and he somewhat patches up the relationship with his father. In the very end, Conrad learns he cannot replace his dead brother and can only be himself; he is prepared for whatever might come.
From death to drug use “The Ascent”, teaches a crucial moral lesson in how decisions affect more than one individual. In Ron Rash’s, “The Ascent”, he tells a story about a boy named Jared who has a rough life due to his parent’s decision making. While Jared is on Christmas break he begins to explore in the woods. As he was exploring he discovers a crashed plane that went missing recently. As the story continues Jared reveals little details, or inner thoughts that his young mind does not understand what is happening around him. Rash’s use of naïve narrator, critical foreshadowing, and imagery to create an effective setting that leads to a character revelation.
the reality of a racist society. He must also discover for himself that his father is wrong
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.
The effects of racism can cause an individual to be subjected to unfair treatment and can cause one to suffer psychological damage and harbor anger and resentment towards the oppressor. Bigger is a twenty year old man that lives in a cramped rat infested apartment with his mother and 2 younger siblings. Due to the racist real estate market, Bigger's family has only beat down dilapidated projects of south side Chicago to live in. poor and uneducated, bigger has little options to make a better life for him and his families. having been brought up in 1930's the racially prejudice America, bigger is burdened with the reality that he has no control over his life and that he cannot aspire to anything more than menial labor as an servant. Or his other option which are petty crimes with his gang.
The whole reason why Bigger doesn’t see what happened to Mary as an accident is because it was what helped him apparently find a sole purpose; as if what happened was what needed to happen in his life. After the death of Mary, Bigger saw it as a way of giving the whites what they deserve as he slowly gained a high sense of invincibility and masculinity. Bigger’s motivation was the way he viewed white America. He convinced himself that his whole life was meant for him to accomplish that one thing. Even if it was by accident, it gave him a clear cut purpose he didn’t have before.
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
In the book, Shattered, the book is about a teen who begins to mature as he ages. The main character is starting to become more mature after he gets a placement at a soup kitchen. He starts to realise that there are many problems going on in the society. There are many types of conflicts that are going on around him. The four types of conflicts going on in the book are Human vs. Society, Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human and Human vs. Self. The one conflict that is really making this story apparent is Human vs. Society due to the Rwandan genocide. The Human vs. Self, Human vs. Human, Human vs. Self are the other conflicts that are making this story interesting after the Human vs. Society conflict.
Nowhere in this novel can the reader see a greater example of Bigger’s fear and sense of constriction than in the accidental death of Mary Dalton. The all-encompassing fear that the white world has bred in Bigger takes over when he is in Mary’s room and in danger of being discovered by Mrs. Dalton. This internalized social oppression literally forces his hands to hold the pillow over Mary’s face, suffocating her. Bigger believes that a white person would assume that he was in the room to rape the white girl.
He has a dissociation with his emotions and does not have a sense of guilt when he does something wrong. He is fearful of the whites and this fear causes him to hate them. Olympia Duhart, the author of A Native Son’s Defense: Bigger Thomas and Diminished Capacity, wrote that Bigger would meet elements of the diminished capacity doctrine. Diminished capacity is not an insanity defense, but maybe more of a justification of Bigger’s actions in the moment when he killed Mary. In the moment, his judgement was failed him and he faced an emotional and mental disturbance. Duhart states that Bigger’s social surrounding is likely the cause for is lapse of judgement. This would also explain why Bigger was not remorseful after killing Mary. The environment he was living his basically desensitized him and filled him with anger. It is not just murder because it has a deeper more symbolic reason for its occurrence. Mary mad Bigger afraid an ashamed, whites in general made him fearful and angry. Mary Dalton told Bigger she wanted to help him, she wanted to tears down the wall between the two races. Wright wrote, “she responded to him as if he were human, as if he lived in the same world as she. And he had never felt that before in a white person. But why? Was this some kind of game?” This quote from Native Son shows Bigger’s confused response towards Mary and also the distrust he has towards
Adam, a corporal officer, starts as man who works everyday to catch the ‘villains’ of society, but is not spending enough time with his family, especially his son. He favors his nine year old daughter over his fifteen year old son. Adam views his daughter as a sweet child, and his son as a stubborn teenager who is going through a rebellious stage. However, when his daughter is killed in an accident, his perspective of family changes. In his grief, he states that he wishes he had been a better father. His wife reminds him that he still is a father and he realizes that he still has a chance with his son, Dylan. After his Daughter’s death, he creates a resolution from scriptures that states how he will be a better father. Because of the resolution he creates, he opens up to and spends more time with his son. By th...
Although these actions demonstrate acts of rage, they do not portray the true motivation for Bigger's actions. The cause of Bigger personal conflicts stem his fear of repercussion for his actions as a black in a white dominated society. His fear of the consequences of being discovered with a drunk white woman, drive Bigger Thomas to smother Mary Dalton. This fear arose because of the non physical barriers, set up by society, between white and black people. This tension made Bigger angry while he was forced to secretly drive Jan and Mary around in the car and finally made him snap. Like Bigger, the entire city demonstrates conflicts based upon fear brought about by racial segregation. During the progress of the man hunt, blacks and whites go at each others throats. These various conflicts all stem from fear and racial hatred. Although Richard Wright portrays the segregation of the blacks, he does not omit the segregation of various social groups such as the communists. In contrast, Jan and Max's efforts to save Bigger stem from a struggle for equality. They too feel the constraints of oppression, but have a philosophy and social position with which to
Was it not the unexpected presence of Mrs. Dalton which caused Bigger to suffocate Mary Dalton? Was it not his fear of the consequences of the white mans legal system which forced him to burn the evidence? Was it not the shame that Jan Erlone made him feel which encouraged Bigger to blame Jan for Marys murder? Is Bigger not a victim of his overwhelming surroundings that drove him, beyond his control, to taking such drastic actions? In Native Son there is an abundance of evidence supporting two schools of thought.