Bigger's Innocence In Native Son

Many times in novels, authors will use conflicts to strengthen the plot and to give more depth to the story that they are penning. There are four main plot conflicts that authors have to choose from: man versus nature, man versus society, man versus man, and finally, man versus self. Authors, many times, will use only one or two of these conflicts but in the novel, Native Son, all four conflicts are used to some extent. In this novel, Richard Wright, does a superb job of meticulously blending all four conflicts together to form a well-rounded novel about a black man in 1920 's Chicago.

In Richard Wright’s Native Son, the book is split into three books. The first 2 books focus mainly on the suspense and tensions rising within Bigger’s life and finally in the last book he dies. The dramatic conflict of Native Son takes place chiefly within the mind of Bigger Thomas, who lives in a world of whites, blacks , or reds. To Bigger all of life is conflict and issues that is defined by the color of your skin with the whites being higher up. The tensions within the book can be comparable to fire and ice as each element possess traits which can be seen as metaphors within the novel Native son by Richard Wright and his essay of “How Bigger was Born”.

Native Son is set during the Chicago Renaissance during the 1930’s. Bigger Thompson lives in an impoverished neighborhood, and in a one-bedroom apartment with his mother and two younger siblings. To help supplement his mother’s income Bigger is pressured to take a chauffeur job offered by Mr. Dalton, who is a successful man who is also the landlord of Bigger’s building. On his first night of the job, Bigger is ordered to take Mr. Dalton’s daughter Mary to the local university. However, Mary directs Bigger to pick up her Communist boyfriend Jan. During the night, Mary and Jan drink excessively and beg Bigger to take them to a black neighborhood. When Bigger arrives at the Dalton’s residence Mary is intoxicated to the point where she is inebriated. Thus, causing Bigger to carry her to her bedroom without getting caught. Then, Mary’s blind mother walks in the room to check on her daughter. Frightened, and scared Bigger accidently kills Mary by asphyxiating her with a pillow to keep her quiet. Still

Richard Wright, wrote the fictional novel Native Son, using three intellectual forces, which include: Naturalism, Existentialism, and Communism. He uses these forces, along with racist ideology, to shape the life of a young black male, Bigger, living in the ‘Black Belt’ of Chicago in the 1940’s. Wright refers to the ‘Black Belt,’ as a ‘black world’ where violence is directed towards other American Americans, and warns that this violence will be aimed at white people. Bigger, is used to depict the criminal actions that come along with living in racial confinement under the fear of white people during this time.

In Native Son, Richard Wright paces the plot through his varying sentence structure which differs depending upon the situation at hand. Through the use of short and succinct sentences, especially in dialogue, Wright displays Bigger’s timid nature towards white people. In the narrative, the use of concise sentences depicts fast motions and the simple observations of Bigger. For example, when Bigger carries the intoxicated Mary to her room, Wright describes, “He turned her round and began to mount the steps, one by one. He heard a slight creaking and stopped. He looked, straining his eyes in the gloom. But there was no one” (105) By using simple statements, Wright shows

Wright’s 1940 novel, Native Son had stirred up real controversy by shocking the sensibilities of both black and white America. Wright was inspired to make his readers feel the reality of race relations and that is how Native Son came about. Wright used his observances throughout the previous decade to sculpt the inherent challenges faced by the main character, Bigger Thomas, a 20-year old African American in the South side of Chicago. In a time, when the Great Depression was impacting the economy, the Dust Bowl was crossing the country, and an anti-lynching bill failed to pass in Congress, the context of history became an important facet of Wright’s creation of the film adaptation.

As we read Native Son, Bigger’s resulting attitude toward the whites is a combination of anger and powerful fear. He fears the whites as an overpowering force that he cannot

There have been many cases of social injustice on a number of occasions in the expansive history of the United States. The oppressions of the early movements for women’s suffrage and the relocation and encampment of Native Americans are two of many occurrences. Around the middle of the 20th century, a movement for equality and civil liberties for African Americans among citizens began. In this essay, Notes of a Native son James Baldwin, a black man living in this time, recalls experiences from within the heart of said movement. Baldwin conveys a sense of immediacy throughout his passage by making his writing approachable and estimating an enormous amount of ethos.

Racism is the most ubiquitous theme present in Native Son because it was written in a time when racial inequality was pervasive in everyday life. There was a large disparity in wealth between whites and blacks simply because whites were given more opportunity in the middle and upper class job section around the country, especially Chicago. The large disparity in wealth is best exemplified when Bigger first walks into the white society where:

Throughout world history, it is evident that Native Americans have struggled in society ever since the landing of Christopher Columbus in North America. Ever since the film industry began in the 1890s, Native Americans have been depicted in many negative ways by film makers. One particular way film makers degrade Native Americans by making their white characters convert into Indians or “go Native” and eventually they always become better than the original Indians in the film. This notion has been repeated in many films, three significant films were it is evident is in The Searchers, Little Big Man, and Dances with Wolves.

  In Native Son, Wright employs Naturalistic ideology and imagery, creating the character of Bigger Thomas, who seems to be composed of a mass of disruptive emotions rather than a rational mind joined by a soul. This concept introduces the possibility that racism is not the only message of the novel, that perhaps every person would feel as isolated and alone as Bigger does were he trapped in such a vicious cycle of violence and oppression. Bigger strives to find a place for himself, but the blindness he encounters in those around him and the bleak harshness of the Naturalistic society that Wright presents the reader with close him out as effectively as if they had shut a door in his

   In the early twentieth century black American writers started employing modernist ways of argumentation to come up with possible answers to the race question. Two of the most outstanding figures of them on both, the literary and the political level, were Richard Wright, the "most important voice in black American literature for the first half of the twentieth century" (Norton, 548) and his contemporary Ralph Ellison, "one of the most footnoted writers in American literary history" (Norton, 700). In this paper I want to compare Wright's autobiography "Black Boy" with Ellison's novel "Invisible Man" and, in doing so, assess the effectiveness of their conclusions.

When analyzing Bigger Thomas, Richard Wright’s protagonist in the novel Native Son, one must take into consideration the development of his characterization. Being a poor twenty-year-old Black man in the south side of Chicago living with his family in a cramped one- bedroom apartment in the 1930’s, the odds of him prospering in life were not in his favor. Filled with oppression, violence, and tragedy, Bigger Thomas’ life was doomed from the moment he was born. Through the novel, Bigger divulges his own dreams to provide for his family and to be anything but a “nobody.” Although Bigger struggled to fight through obstacles to pursue his dreams for the future, his chase for a better life came to an abrupt

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, depicts the life of the general black community in Chicago during the 1930’s. Though African Americans had been freed from slavery, they were still burdened with financial and social oppression. Forced to live in small, unclean quarters, eat foods on the verge of going bad, and pay entirely too much for both, these people struggled not to be pressured into a dangerous state of mind (Bryant). All the while, they are expected to act subserviently before their oppressors. These conditions rub many the wrong way, especially Bigger Thomas, the protagonist of the story. Though everyone he is surrounded by is going through all the same things that he is, growing up poor and uneducated has made Bigger angry at the whole world. You can see this anger in everything he does, from his initial thoughts to his final actions. Because of this, Bigger Thomas almost seems destined to find trouble and meet a horrible fate. Wright uses these conventions of naturalism to develop Bigger’s view of the white community(). With all of these complications, Bigger begins to view all white people as an overwhelming force that drags him to his end. Wright pushes the readers into Bigger’s mind, thoroughly explaining Bigger’s personal decay. Even Wright himself says that Bigger is in fact a native son, just a “product of American culture and the violence and racism that suffuse it” (Wright).

In Native Son, Bigger, the main character, and his family are being over priced for a rundown, one-bedroom flat unsuitable to live in because of their race. Mr. Dalton, Bigger 's boss, owns the company that sold the Thomas 's their flat. The Thomas family along with a lot of other Africans in Chicago at the time, were forced to live in south side