Bigger Thomas

A headstrong young woman, she defies her parents by dating a Communist, cares about social issues, and is personally interested in improving the lives of black Americans. Wright gives little information about whether or not her political convictions are solidly grounded or just enjoys following the excitement of her radical boyfriend. However, Wright's portrayal of communism in relation to a young white female allows for a slight spread of Communist propaganda. She is likeable and her desire to help blacks like Bigger is certainly sincere. Nevertheless, she is unaware of Bigger's feelings, and, despite her good intentions, she acts in a racist manner, which speaks of white women as a whole and their blindness to understand exactly what it means to struggle as a black American. Though Mary's intentions are essentially good, she gives no thought to the fact that Bigger might be surprised and confused by such unprecedented treatment from the wealthy white daughter of his employer. She treats Bigger not as an individual whose friendship must be earned, but as a representative of the black race. Mary simply assumes that Bigger will embrace her friendship, as she seems to think her political views guarantee her right to his companionship.

Bigger Thomas is a fictional, 20 year old, Negro male living in Chicago during the Great Depression. This character, created by Richard Wright in Native Son, became assigned with the job of giving insight to the life of a black American male during the 1930s. Bigger lived a life in which he made decisions on impulse, fueled by his emotions. No action Bigger completed became carried out with proper thought and rationality, thus, ultimately ending in his imprisonment and, furthermore, his death. Through the telling of Bigger’s life, Wright shows what influences created a man such as Bigger. In doing this, Wright proves that Bigger Thomas cannot exist as more than a symbol used to highlight the oppression the black race faced post Civil War.

This gap between what Bigger understands about himself and what the narrative voice can comprehend creates dramatic irony, especially when Bigger is confronted with Jan and Mary’s inexplicably friendly behavior. Wright’s descriptions of Jan and Mary make their good intentions clear to all but Bigger, and therefore sets up an unequal relationship between Bigger and the reader. He is now at the mercy not only of his own impulses, his employer’s wishes, and the law of white society, but also of Wright and his audience. The vertical consciousness that allows us to see so clearly what Bigger cannot, supports the deterministic trap that Wright has set for him. His environment has saddled him with unsatisfied urges, and now Wright has made him the victim of chance. In Mary’s claim that she wants to see how black people live in Chicago, Bigger experiences the “deep sense of exclusion” that Wright describes in How Bigger Was Born (518). Then, in seeing Mary’s white robed mother at her bedroom door, he encounters the corresponding “feeling of looking at things with a painful and unwarrantable nakedness,” the understanding of his total vulnerability, which forces him to kill Mary (518). His fate is sealed. With this dramatic irony, produced by a kind of vertical consciousness, Wright has proven to what extent the black man’s agency, his interiority, is “warped” by external forces and placed in

In Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, lives in a world where he is constantly limited by the color of his skin; through his actions and through his words, Bigger proves that hatred is often derived from fear and misunderstanding, ultimately leading to the kind of treachery that sends a person to the ninth level of Hell. Living in 1930s Chicago, Bigger Thomas, like most other blacks living in the United States during the time, was fearful and envious of the privileged whites he saw driving around in their nice cars and residing in their large estates. Bigger spoke to his gang about his envious thoughts, saying, “we live here and they live there. We black and they white.

 In Richard Wright's Native Son Bigger Thomas, the protagonist, is a young man in his late teens living with his mom, sister, and brother in a one-bedroom rat infested apartment in Chicago. Throughout the book it becomes evident that Wright is using this book as a form of protest against the Status Quo which is the oppressive white society. With the creation of the character Jan, the white upper class and communist party are represented. Jan tries to explain that communism would be better for "Your People" and that everyone would be treated equally in the Marxist society. Jan is just one of the characters in the book who thinks he knows Bigger, based on the color of his skin. It is at this time where Bigger becomes further confused and unfortunately stays this way all the way until the very end of the book. Through the use of

Young describes race as “the tool to organize the distribution of power and resources and to define legal status” (1042). Race has been always been a way to divide people and determine a person’s importance in society. In the book, Native Son, by Richard Wright, the ideology of discrimination is explored through its main character, Bigger Thomas. Bigger and his family live in a rat infested apartment and struggle to make ends meet. Bigger is ultimately forced to take a job working for a white family in efforts to relieve some of the stress put on his poverty infected family. While having a conversation with his friend about how the black community is treated by the white people around them, Bigger poses the questions, “Why they make us live in one corner of the city? Why don’t they let us fly planes and run ships” (Wright 20). Bigger feels that because he is black, he will forever be held back from his full potential. He addresses the racism and oppression he is forced into by white society and is starting to realize the affects it is having on his life. Later on in the novel, Bigger kills a white woman who is a member of the wealthy family he works for named, Mary Dalton. Initially, the murder is accidental but Bigger then unmercifully decapitates her body and burns it in a furnace, in efforts to hide all evidence. Bigger’s unnecessary actions after the manslaughter are based solely on his fear of the white community and what would happen to him in consequence for

The story gains an entirely new context when we are let into Bigger's thoughts. Outwardly, his story looks like one of robbery, murder, and rape-murder. Inwardly, it is a power struggle between two societies, both living in Bigger's world. While the basis of Bigger's world is set in fact (black people were treated like dirt for quite some time), the

Throughout the novel, Wright depicts Communist Party members Jan Erlone and Boris Max, as well as sympathiser Mary Dalton as individuals that care on some level for Bigger, but their efforts are misguided. Jan and Mary, who both advocate for racial equality, are oblivious of Bigger’s feelings throughout Book One. The Communist Party is unable to prevent Bigger from being executed. In the final portion of the novel, Bigger’s revelation and state of inner peace does not come from the party’s failed attempts to save him Instead, Wright places that agency with the individual, albeit with some help from liberal whites. Max, who represents Bigger during the murder trial, rejects Bigger’s self-realization. Wright suggests that battles with the outside world can be engaged, Black Americans must deal with the internal struggles they face. The Communist Party is a well-intentioned organization with the fatal flaw that its liberal white members will never be able to relate to Bigger and other Black Americans or the realities they face daily.

At the beginning of the novel, the audience sees that Bigger is forced to steal because he is unable to get any good jobs. Bigger and his gang are planning to rob a white person for the first time, which scares Bigger as he see’s whites as an unstoppable and hostile force. Bigger also goes to a movie where he see’s white presented as wealthy and sophisticated while blacks are presented as savages. This movie shows how Bigger’s perception of whites was formed. Later when Bigger kills Mary, we see that he killed her out of fear and not anger or ill intent.

Richard Wright, an author in the nineteen forties, wrote a book explaining the brutal reality of being a black man in the nineteen thirties. Wright made up the character Bigger Thomas. Bigger was an uneducated twenty year old who lived in poverty on the Southside of Chicago. Bigger and his family were the definition of poor. Bigger and his family lived in a single room apartment that was infested with rats. Wright not only showed the physical struggles of being black person in the thirties, but also the mental effects of it. The society in the nineteen thirties could make one feel angry, depressed, frightened, and even defenseless. The time period made Bigger feel angry and defenseless. In order to feel some kind of power, Bigger bullied who were just like him. Bigger bullied the weak and oppressed who had given up hope. Wright made it known that Bigger felt that women were the weakest links in the story because they had accepted being oppressed and refused to fight. Bigger treated the women in Native Son horrible in order to feel some sense of power.

When he brings Mary, his rich employers daughter to her room, he smothers her with a pillow her for fear that he will be discovered in her room. He knows that he has killed her by accident but automatically he thinks “She was dead and he had killed her. He was a murderer. A Negro Murderer, a black murderer” (95). Bigger goes on to say, “though he had killed her by accident, not once did he feel the need to tell himself that it had been an accident. He was black and he had been alone in a room where a white girl had been killed, therefore he had killed her” Bigger understands the world that he lives in deeply and knows that everyone will assume that he killed her on purpose. That he raped her. He does not even tell himself the truth because his truth is not considered reality by society. His truth is not important. Bigger becomes a criminal as a way to survive. He becomes exactly how white men and women see him: a rapist and a murderer. He begins to feel like he can only get out of his environment by murdering, and manipulating others. Bigger goes so far as to identify himself as a murderer capable of killing anyone who gets in his way. He goes as far as raping and killing Bessie, his

When Bigger Thomas brings Mary Dalton home after a night out, he is ever so careful with her, in hopes of not disturbing the rest of the house. He doesn’t want Mary, or even himself to get in trouble, because of Mary’s drunkenness. Mary, indifferent than the white community, “responded to him as if he were human, as if he lived in the same world as she “(Wright 65). Because Bigger felt a little more comfortable around Mary, than he did with her father, he acted in a way that later put him to shame. Mrs. Dalton walks into the bedroom where Bigger and Mary were, which frightens him, making him commit the crime of killing Mary. Bigger thought that he would be caught, so he covers Mary’s face to keep her quiet. Mrs. Dalton’s blindness causes her to not physically see Bigger or Mary, or even the crime that Bigger does. The blindness causes Bigger to both commit a violent act, and get away with it for a short period of time. The physical blindness correlates with the idea that whites do not see blacks as

In the first chapter of the book, Bigger is unable to accept his behavior, aside from a few instances when he justifies his actions out of fear. However, in Book Two, he begins reflect his identity and consciousness. At the beginning of the novel, Bigger is aware of the societal line and struggles under the oppression of white authority. This white authority angers Bigger which causes him to think irrationally. For example, Bigger and his gang regularly robbed blacks in his neighborhood; however the one time he thought about robbing a white man, a cloud of fear strangled him.

Wright furthers his theme that societal expectations may negatively influence an individual because Bigger believes that he has no other choice, but needs to cover his tracks over the events that surround Mary’s murder because society naturally expects and assumes that Bigger deserves punishment for the misfortunate event. This causes Bigger to fear the consequences of his actions and attempt to place the blame for the murder on Mary’s communist boyfriend, Jan. Although, Bigger realizes that his skin color may make him a prime suspect as a murderer, he tries to use societal expectations in his favor by placing himself out of the scene of the murder. In 19th century America, society did not only demonstrate discrimination towards the Blacks, but also demonstrate discrimination toward the Communists. Bigger believes that society expects the Communists to fight their cause through extreme acts. Given that Americans feared Communism while racial prejudices occurred, Wright incorporates these ideas to highlight a great issue. Many people fail to empathize with other individuals who are facing similar struggles. Bigger and Jan (Mary’s boyfriend) are both experiencing prejudice from the people they are surrounded with, yet Bigger fails to recognize that Jan is ostracized from society due to his Communist beliefs. It appears that Jan’s white skin is shielding from Bigger from seeing the

Isolation Bigger Thomas feels isolated from both the black and white worlds because of his uncontrollable rage throughout the entire book. Bigger grows up poverty-stricken and constantly discriminated by whites in 1930’s Chicago. Bigger is also intimidated by both races which he hates, so he grows even more irritated. Bigger provokes his isolation further when he feels he loses control of a situation and, like always, resorts to anger. Bigger isolates himself from the black and white worlds.