Nature Vs Nurture In Bigger Thomas

“Native Son” composed by Richard Wright was revolved into an American drama picture in 1986 by director Jerrold Freeman. This piece caused a lot of controversy on whether the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is guilty or innocent in the unfortunate events that have occurred. The purpose of this argumentative essay is to examine Richard Wright’s film adaptation of Native Son and prove his innocence based on how society deceived and deprived African Americans, his living and social environment, and his fears.

In his most famous novel, Native Son, Richard Wright's female characters exist not as self-sufficient, but only in relation to the male figures of authority that surround them, such as their boyfriends, husbands, sons, fathers, and Bigger Thomas, the protagonists. Wright presents the women in Native Son as meaningless without a male counterpart, in which the women can not function as an independent character on their own. Although Wright depicts clearly the oppression of Blacks, he appears unconscious of creating female characters who regardless of race, are exploited and suppressed. Their sole purpose in the novel is to further the story by putting Bigger in new and more dangerous situations by

A century would go by, and within that time “Jim Crow” and the Minstrel era would reshape the image of Blacks in America causing a backlash of negative stereotypes into modern times.

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”.

In a progressive society like the United States, looking to the past is common, to learn from our mistakes but some undeniable issues of the past repeat and are omitted from our society because of their unpleasant nature, a great example of this is the Jim-Crow Era. In this paper, I will be discussing the main events of the Jim-Crow era, its initiation, the new style of slavery in the south, and the way it re-shaped the lives of African Americans all across the country, its re-enforcement in the beginning of the twentieth century, its major supporters, like the Ku Klux Klan. Confederate state leaders, and its major oppositions like the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, and the idea of the United States setting a global example of

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.

The sense of agency is formed through the responsibilities and interaction with others. It is essential in life, but how is one’s life different if they do not have that sense of agency? Native Son is written by Richard Wright. The protagonist named Bigger Thomas is a poor, uneducated, and 20-year-old black man. He lived in a one-room apartment with his mother, little brother, and little sister. Bigger was originally part of a gang, but then he left and got the opportunity to work for Mr. Dalton. However, on the first day of his job, he accidentally killed the daughter of Mr. Dalton named Mary Dalton. In my opinion, Bigger portrayed as a person who does not have agency over his life. The factors that formed Bigger into a person with no control

In the mid 1900’s, different parts of society struggled with power due to the idea of racial supremacy. The idea of a superior race lead to the racial oppression of blacks, which had deep and lasting effects on society. This can be seen in Native Son by Richard Wright. During this time, power was heavily dependent on race: a concept Bigger Thomas struggled with throughout the entire novel. This can be seen on Bigger’s journey to understand and grasp for power, and the lasting effects of racial oppression on not only himself, but the black community as a whole.

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.

During the 1880’s, American race relations reached their rock-bottom as whites sought ways to dominate the blacks on every front in the country. This spanned from school segregation to disenfranchisement. Such domination saw the rise of the Jim Crow system, a system that was adopted from a song-and-dance routine that aped an old, crippled slave named James Crow (Kousser 479). By 1838, the term Jim Crow became associated with the black community and by the late nineteenth century, whites in the South used the term to refer to a system of racial discrimination and segregation, meant to subjugate African Americans. Therefore, the Jim Crow Laws were ordinances and statutes that were set up between 1874 and 1975 to segregate black races from the whites.

Jim Crow laws were social practices of discrimination with white people against the opposite race as them, which was mainly against African Americans. However, the term was originally referred to a black character in the 1800’s minstrel shows in which white performers wore “blackface,” and pretended to be black characters. Once reconstruction ended, it opened a door to the “Jim Crow era,” and began a long period in which African Americans in the south were denied the full rights of Aamerican citizenship. “Although, there were a set of laws that have been passed in southern states, which after they had earned their freedom from slavery.” (““Presentation Name.” Emaze Presentations).,

In Richard Wright’s Native Son, alienation, the state of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or be involved in, is a major theme presented in the novel. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, faces alienation repeatedly from society due to his identity as a young African American boy living in Chicago. Because of his skin color, in different places, he felt inferior to everyone around him and felt like he had no purpose in his life because of society’s expectations: African Americans ending up in a jail cell for the rest of their lives, making them feel worthless. As a result, he went looking for that power without knowing it. When he killed both Mary and Bessie, he felt that power rush to him. However, Bigger does end up in jail because of his wrong doings. Even though justice was served for the killings of Mary Dalton and Bessie, he did not deserve such a harsh sentence just because he is a darker skin tone compared to the Whites.

  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

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).