Bigger Thomas as America’s Native Son :: Essays Papers

Bigger Thomas as Americas Native SonIn the novel the Native Son, the author Richard Wright explores racism and oppression in Ameri crowd out society. Wright skillfully merges his narrative voice into Bigger Thomas so that the reader can also witness 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 instauration. Bigger embodies one of humankinds 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.The novel is loaded with a plethora of imageries of a hostile dust coat world. Wright shows how white racism affects the behavior, feelings, and thoughts of Bigger. Everytime I think about it I feel like somebodys push a red-hot iron down my throatWe live here and they live there. We blackened and they white. They got things and w e aint. They do things and we cantI feel like Im on the outside the world peeping in through a knot-hole in the fence (20). Biggers sense of niggardliness 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 conditionsthat one out of every ten of us is insaneyou motherfucker all stale foods into the Black Belt and sell them for more than you can get anywhere elseYou tax us, but you wont build hospitalsthe schools are so crowded that they breed pervertsyou hire us last and fire us first (318). Biggers sense of constriction by the white world is so strong that he has no doubt that something awfuls going to happen to me (21).Nowhere in this novel can the reader chitchat a greater example of Biggers fear and sense of constriction than in the accidental death of Mary Dalton. T he all-encompassing fear that the white world has bred in Bigger takes over when he is in Marys room and in danger of being discovered by Mrs. Dalton. This internalized accessible oppression literally forces his hands to hold the pillow over Marys face, suffocating her. Bigger believes that a white person would assume that he was in the room to rape the white girl.