Motif Of Blindness

Richard Wright was born on September 4, 1908, to a poor family on a plantation in Mississippi. His father was an illiterate sharecropper and his mother was a well-educated teacher. Due to his family’s poverty they were forced to move to Memphis. When Wright was five years old, his father left his family for another woman, and his mother was forced to leave her job as a school teacher and do domestic work to provide for her family. As Wright grew up, he became involved with the Communist Party, and in 1940 he published Native Son. This success of Wright’s book made the black community proud of him, but it also brought a lot of uncomfortable feelings. They felt that the main character, Bigger, portrayed a stereotypical, harsh, black man the

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.

The book Native son is based in the 1930s about a black man named Bigger Thomas and his troubles as a black person in this bad time of segregation and oppression. In this debate we discussed about the murder of Mr.Dalton’s daughter and if Bigger or society were the ones at fault for her death. This debate is important because it touches on the subject of segregation and fear upon another minority race but also on the ongoing story of Native Son. My group was against society and we believed that Bigger was truly the one at fault because of these points. Bigger Thomas knew the consequences of being in a white girl’s room but still continued to carry Mary to her room which eventually led to her death. When Mrs.Dalton had came into the room Bigger had the power to choose his actions but he thought it was necessary to smother Mary to death. Her death was not due to society or how grew up thinking; it was his choice to kill her in the end with his own hands. He took pleasure in the excitement; not the other way around.

Moreover, books with literary value that teach readers something worth knowing as its message sometimes changes who they are as a person. By using well developed characters, setting, and plot with important symbols, the author usually makes readers have deep reflections on humanity, life, and morals. For example, in Native Son, Richard Wright tries to shed light on the issue of racism and its adverse effects on people by utilizing literary devices such as the setting of Chicago, the characterization of Bigger Thomas, and the symbolism of blindness. By juxtaposing Bigger’s and Dalton’s house, both in Chicago and yet divided by the “Black Belt”, he underlines the segregation of American society. Wright also develops symbols of blindness to give an idea that both the black and white societies are

In the beginning of Max’s speech, he begins to analyze Bigger’s case and introduces what he is trying to proclaim. He explains certain crucial things, like why he did not want a jury trial for Bigger. He said “ dare I, … put his fate in the hands of a jury (not of his peers, but of an alien and hostile race!) whose minds are already conditioned by the press of the nation; a press which has already reached a decision to his guilt” (Wright 384). This quote tells us that he did not want a jury trial because the jury, also the citizens of America, do not know much about African Americans, and they are very hostile towards them.

With the rapid development technology and treatment, physical blindness is becoming less troubling or bothersome. However, it is surprising to find that most people are blind in an unnoticed way. Richard Wright wrote the novel Native Son, to warn the reader to notice the mental blindness that blocked black people’s voice for equality and better life. The blindness is the outcome of most people’s spontaneous choice to run from difficult realities, although people are ultimately able to understand the reality that inversely depends on their satisfaction of blind life. Blindness is generated in Bigger because of the large gap between dream and reality, in blacks because of their pain and suffering under white people’s rule, and strongly in whites because of their latent guilt towards blacks.

Wright uses Bigger’s psychological corruption to send a message to the reader. It offers a new view on the underlying effects of racism on the black community of the time period. Wright creates Bigger from the diversity he saw throughout American society. “I made the discovery that Bigger Thomas was not black all the time; he was white, too, and there were literally millions of him, everywhere... I became conscious, at first dimly, and then later on with increasing clarity and conviction, of a vast, muddied pool of human life in America. It was as though I had put on a pair of spectacles whose power was that of an x-ray enabling me to see deeper into the lives of men. Whenever I picked up a newspaper, I 'd no longer feel that I was reading of the doings of whites alone (Negroes are rarely mentioned in the press unless they 've

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.

Blindness is the loss of sight, and it can be temporary or permanent, but is it more complex than we know. Native Son was written by Richard Wright. It tells a story about a twenty-year-old man named Bigger Thomas, who is uneducated and black. He and his family lived in a one-room apartment on Chicago’s South Side during the 20th century. He was given the opportunity to work for a wealthy, white family called the Daltons. However, on his first day, he ended up murdering their only daughter, Mary and later his girlfriend, Bessie. Bigger was eventually caught by the police and Max was his lawyer for the case. In the end, the court final decision was giving him a death sentence. Throughout Native Son, Wright revealed that blindness affects everyone

To begin with being fearful caused Bigger to turn against his friends. Bigger’s gang is made up of three African American males. They go around town stealing from only black communities because if a black person would report that they have been robbed the police (during the time was white) would not find justice. Till one day the gang decided they were going to rob a white man’s store which was more dangerous because if they got caught they would go to jail. Bigger did not want to do this job which made him terrified.

Blindness, the lack of perception, awareness, or judgement, in the novel Native Son by Richard Wright serves as a metaphor to be taken as an awareness check for both the society in which the book was written in, and today. The symbol represents people’s sociocultural blindness towards other people, and how their blindness affects both them personally, and others around them. The literal, physical blindness, is depicted the character of Mrs. Dalton, a white female who lived in a privileged society. The metaphorical blindness, on the other hand, is prevalent through the characters of Mr. Dalton, Jan Erlone, and Bigger Thomas. Wright exemplifies that the white society, during the time of the Great Migration, were not the only groups of people who were blind towards others. Although the two groups, both black and white, were separated due to skin color, Wright writes on the theme of seeing people as individuals, not based entirely on the color of their skin. The title, Native Son shows of how Bigger Thomas is a product of violence and racism in the United States. The question rises if another character or individual could rise up, in the future, due to the blindness or ignorance shown by individuals of both races.

Slavery might have ended, but the 1940s in America were still a time of racial prejudices and discrimination. Many treated African Americans as subhuman, limiting their education, where they could live, and their individual rights. Richard Wright, an African American author in the 1940s, became frustrated with the state of a society where all men were supposedly equal. In Native Son, Wright shows how prejudice and discrimination can shape one’s conscience, self-esteem, and trust in others to show white Americans the people bred by racism. Bigger Thomas, a member of a poor African American family, finds himself accidentally killing a white woman named Mary Dalton.

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).

Throughout the whole novel Bigger had felt cornered and intimidated by the white man and who they were. However, this man was different from the others. He treated Bigger as a normal human being, not as a downtrodden person or a murderer, just a normal human being. This is the only instince in which this happens in the whole novel. Wright used it primarily to show that he himself did not feel as if all whites were bad but that because of stereotyping, many were. Wright goes out of his way to show that this man was not under the inlfluence of stereotyping and to show the decent side of some whites.

Racial acrimony, bleak economic prospects, unanticipated troubles, and perhaps destiny test the mettle of Bigger repeatedly. Bigger’s life wades through deliberate experimentations, and it is through these experiments that Wright detests socio-economic consequences of slavery and racism on African American populace. As Ford states, “Wright’s major purpose in this novel was to show that social and economic barriers against race lead to grave injustices toward racial minorities and that those injustices so distort character and personality growth that criminal monstrosities, such as Bigger, are produced” (89). Bigger and his fellow blacks are prevented from availing economic and social equality on account of poverty and limited choices that the