Is Bigger No Longer Fearful In The Presence Of Gus, Jack And G. H.

He is not a very nice person. He is rude to his mother, he is a bully to his sister and to his friends. However, the situation that Bigger is forced to be in, and what drives him to make most of his actions, creates a sympathetic tone where the reader feels bad for Bigger. It is not his fault that he comes from a poor family or that he is a black man in a time where racism is very prevalent.

I would argue, however, that Bigger always detested whites treating him like a nobody and after accidentally killing Mary Dalton, he began being more open about he he feels since he had little to lose. Anyway, Bryant’s main argument is that the white world does not see Bigger, and this is one of Bigger’s biggest fears. Indeed, when they accuse him of rape, this takes away the subjectivity that would have been associated with him had he simply been called a murderer. In addition to making Bigger seem less than human by labeling him as a rapist, the authorities do not think that Bigger is intelligent enough to carry out a murder as complex as Mary Dalton’s. All this goes to show that Bigger is a symbol that whites have used as an excuse to discriminate against Blacks, and who Bigger is as a person is not something that really matters. The reason Bigger has negative feelings towards all Whites for the majority of the book is because they only see his skin color.

In the beginning, when Bigger started working for the Dalton’s, he had to drive Mary Dalton, the daughter, to the University of Chicago. However, she wanted him to pick up her boyfriend, Jan, and head to a restaurant. When Bigger was in the car with Jan and Mary, “he was very conscious of his black skin...Jan and men like him” made Bigger feel insecure of who he was. (Wright 67) Even though Jan and Mary did not say anything that would insult his race, the presence of white people made him self-conscious. Being

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

The plan falls through after Bigger starts a fight with one of the guys who comes late. "Bigger was afraid of robbing a white man and he knew that Gus was afraid, too… He hated Gus because he knew that Gus was afraid, as even he was; and he feared Gus because he felt that Gus would consent and then he would be compelled to go through with the robbery" (25). Bigger hates his race and wishes he could escape the oppression. He isn't proud of being black and sees it as an impediment and a burden. These views of his own race allow him to pilfer from them with no remorse. He and his friends clandestinely envy the freedom that white people experience. He longs to enjoy their privileges but doesn't know how to release himself of the racial boundaries: ‘"Them white boys sure can fly," Gus said. "Yeah," bigger said wistfully. "They get a chance to do everything."… "I could fly a plane if I had a chance," Bigger said. "If you wasn't black and if you had some money and if they'd let you go to aviation school, you could fly a plane," Gus said' (16-17). Racism has curtailed Bigger's ambitions in life and his perception of himself. He is ashamed of his family's penury and he hides his feelings. He has crafted a façade of toughness to guard himself from the pressure he feels because of his family's social position and his inability to help

The use of media negatively influences Bigger’s opinions of himself. Bigger’s fear of society and white people becomes overwhelming when he accidentally murders Mr. Dalton’s daughter,

Out of these four types of betrayals, Bigger Thomas committed two. One in his lying to the Dalton family and killing their daughter, Mary, and a second because when he committed such offences against the Daltons, he also betrayed his family due to the fact that he was the man of the household and was expected to provide for his family, which he failed to do when he murdered two innocent women and was then executed. When he accidentally smothered Mary in her sleep, Bigger immediately panicked, and his first thought was to hide the body. Finally deciding to put her body in the furnace so there would be no evidence of her even coming home from a gala, he then had to behead the corpse in order to make it fit into the opening. Bigger had said that he had never felt more alive than before, as if finally acting on his impulses freed him from the prison he had been living in for so long.

When they finally get home, mary is so drunk that she can’t make it to her room. Bigger, drunk and slightly aroused, he tries to kiss Mary. Mary’s blind mother comes in the room, and bigger gets nervous. Afraid that mary will make his presence known, he tries to quiet her with a pillow. Somehow he accidentally smothers her. This is a feeling Bigger has never known before, like he had gained some kind of power over this powerful oppression called “white people”. At first he didn’t know what he was going to do. He shoves her in her luggage trunk and carry it downstairs. He see’s the furnace and tries to hide her in there, but her shoulders wouldn’t fit. He starts hacking her head off with a hatchet, then he throws it in the furnace with the body. He starts planning and blames it all on Jan. He eats breakfast at the Daltons house and then starts to take her trunk to the train station, then he goes to see bessie. He tells her about the Dalton girl missing, then decides to write a ransom letter to the Daltons, trying to get money out of them. He bullies bessie into playing part in this scheme. She could tell there was part of the story that he wasn’t telling her. Mr. Dalton finds out that Mary never got to Detroit, and that her bag was never claimed, so he hires a private detective named Britten. Britten brings Jan to the house and starts questioning him. He knows Bigger is lying and confronts him on the street about it, but Bigger scares him off with a gun. He

In the same fashion Bigger does another thing to solidify that he does not have empathy or value human life. Inked in the pages of Native Son, but left out of Jerrold Freedman's film, Bigger commits more than one murder. In the book Bigger murders and rapes his then girlfriend Bessie. As Jared Rosenbaum puts it in his article, "Bigger Thomas: Guilty or Innocent", he states "Already into the second book, Bigger Is free from the grasp of Jan and Mary, and he is making his own choices... In my eyes, one of the few choices that Bigger

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.

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.

Once again, he allows anger to isolate him from people. He allows many of his emotions such as nerves turn directly into resentment. Bigger grows up with the thought drilled into his head that whites are superior and he rarely has interacted with the whites. This thought makes Bigger hate whites, he resents them for their superiority only because they are white. Bigger hates them because they have greater opportunities than blacks.

She tells Bigger, “I think I can trust you” (Wright 64) in order to toy with his emotions and disobey his boss’ orders as Bigger, Mary, and Mary’s communist boyfriend Jan Erlone take the car out for a night in the loop. After a rousing evening on the town filled with booze and conversations about communism that left Bigger offended and ashamed to be black, it became Bigger’s duty to make sure that Mary was placed safely in her bed after being too intoxicated to stand on her own. Because Bigger strives to obey his boss, he feels inclined to personally place Mary in her own room in order to avoid trouble. This shows that Bigger Thomas took Mary to her bedroom with no intention of causing any problems in his new workplace reminding the reader that Bigger is not an evil human being, just a product of his environment. After being in Mary’s bedroom, Bigger decided to overstay his welcome due to his curious arousal with white women. To Bigger’s surprise, “a hysterical terror seized him” (Wright 85) as Mrs. Dalton makes an appearance in Mary’s bedroom to check on her daughter. Bigger automatically assumed that if he was caught in Mary Dalton’s bedroom at an odd hour of the night he would be immediately fired and accused of raping a white woman that could ruin his already tragic life forever. Due to her blindness, Bigger was not seen immediately, but he realized if Mary kept mumbling, Mrs. Dalton would make her way

While Mr. Dalton, owner of the controlling stock of the Dalton Real Estate company which owns the controlling stock of the South Side Real Estate company, claims to work towards the cause of colored people, he refuses to rent out houses to Negroes outside of the South Side. As a result, Bigger was born and raised under such constraints, and it is his worry that he will never be given the chance to succeed because the whites have confined him and his people. As mentioned earlier in the novel, Bigger expresses his interest towards aviation. However, it frustrates him that he will never get the chance to pursue his interest because in order to do so he would have to complete school with an aviation major, but the opportunity will never come to him because of his black skin. As a result, because Bigger isn't given the freedom to accomplish his goals, he cannot better himself.

Bigger hates his family because of their poverty and suffering and because he feels there is nothing he can do to help them. He believes that he cannot afford to let himself feel their shame and misery too strongly without also feeling the urge to kill himself or someone else. He has cultivated a façade of outer toughness to protect himself from the unbearable pressure he feels as a result of his family’s social position. His