Essay about The Cycle of Fear

Richard Wright made a film adaptation called “Native Son”, speaking on a time frame where segregation was still present in 1940’s of Chicago, a man was accused of murder. This film took a quick wrong turn when something unpredictable happened causing conflicting views. In addition to this racism played a great deal in his crime to be found guilty. In addition to this racism played a great deal in his crime to be found guilty. The purpose of this essay to examine Richard Wright's film adaptation of ‘Native Son’ and his innocent crime in regards to racism, violence, and poverty, to discuss view of points of whether he is guilty or innocent.

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.

From the first pages of the novel, Bigger is associated with the color black. The most obvious is his skin color, as well as the fact that most of the action of the plot is located in the Black Belt of South Chicago. The Black

Bigger acted irrationally, suffocating Mary on accident in order to prevent himself from getting caught. He then took her down to the basement and attempted to place her in the furnace. After realizing her head would not fit in the furnace, he “whacked at the bone with the knife. The head hung limply on the newspapers, the curly black hair dragging about in blood. He whacked harder, but the head would not come off”(Wright, 92). This act of extreme violence is exactly what Wright intended to show. This act of “taboo” contrasted greatly from what was seen and expected of the Negro man during this time. The act of Bigger raping and killing Bessie also shows Wright’s usage of shock value. Bigger and Bessie hide out in an abandoned home after the police comes to the realization that Bigger killed Mary. As they hide out, Bigger sees Bessie as a liability and comes to the conclusion that he must kill her. As he smashes her head in with the

The obliviousness of white society is most clearly demonstrated by “You know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into these houses, and just see how your people live. You know what I mean? I’ve been to England, France, and Mexico, but I don’t know how people live ten blocks from me. We know so little about each other. I just want to see. I want to know these people. Never in my life have I been inside of a negro home. Yet they must live like we live. They’re human. There are twelve million of them. They live in our country. In the same city with us.” (Wright 70). This excerpt from the book came from one of the dialogues of Mary, the wealthy white girl that Bigger was “forced” to murder because of her intoxication. Mary was a white woman who had not experienced the squalor of black society. As a result, she thinks relatively highly of black society in that she thinks that they live in a similar manner as whites. This adds to the theme of racism because it shows that whites made no effort to learn about how badly the blacks were being oppressed and that whites only saw blacks as inferiors who deserved to be treated like they do because of the immoral actions of a few blacks.

The story of Native Son by Richard Wright is one of the greatest pieces of literature which functioned as a massive wake-up call for the American public. According to Irving Howe, when "[t]he day Native Son appeared, American culture was changed forever." Native Son was written at a time when blacks were stereotyped as brutal and uncivilized. Wright depicts his community’s suffering, poverty and denial of rightful recognition in his works. Wright’s Native Son not only represents history with sociopolitical factors, but also has excellent literary value.

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.

Bigger Thomas feels paranoia because he knew, for a fact, about the reactions he was going to emit from the White community just as much as any African American did. If one looks at history, they would recall that whenever a Black man did something to a White woman, it was that was their death knell. Earlier in the novel, the narrator explains to the readers that “they felt that it was much easier and safer to rob their own people, for they knew that white policemen never really searched diligently for Negroes who committed crimes against other Negroes” (Wright 17). The narrator points this out to remind readers that when a Black man did something to their race, the White men would look over it. However, if a Black man were to do something to a White man, that’s when they would hunt down a Black man until they have found him and arrest him. In a sense, this was used as foreshadowing to show that Bigger would eventually, albeit accidentally, murder Mary herself. When it comes to Mary’s death, White men called for his head as if she represented something to them despite them not knowing her personally. In fact, Buckley goes as far as to state that Bigger Thomas “has ravished and struck down one of the finest and most delicate flowers of our womanhood” (Wright 373). Buckley, who doesn’t even know Mary Dalton, knows that she was White and held her high on a pedestal as a way to show the readers how White men viewed their women. However, it could be stated that Mary’s death “is

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.

to afford food and housing, led to resentment between the two social classes. In the novel, the social classes were divided by who lived on what side of the city line. The real estate companies would only rent run down apartments to blacks on their side of the line, ironically at higher rates. Towards the end of the novel, Bigger’s lawyer, Max states how “‘You rent to Negroes in the Black Belt and you refuse to rent to them elsewhere” when speaking in front of the courtroom, mentioning how Mr. Dalton hurts the black community. As Bigger Thomas searched around his family’s small one room apartment, divided by curtains he “then darted to a curtain and swept it aside and grabbed two heavy iron skillets from a wall above a gas stove” in search

Bigger is oppressed by racism in the 1930s. In the 1930s the color of a person’s skin defined them. Bigger being a black male defines him as a lesser man than a white man. People of color are reduced to live in the South Side of Chicago. Bigger, his mom, and two siblings live in a dirty

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.

Bigger commits his crimes in winter, while the land is covered with snow referring to the white world that he lives within. Even though, when he was escaping, the snow was everywhere around him reminding him of the huge amount of power that he resists. He stands alone encountering the power and the arrogance of the whites. Richard Wright wants to show that despite all these forces, Bigger is capable of being what he wants to be. Richard Wright did not aim to encourage violence among African American through the character of Bigger as much as he wanted to warn of violence that may occur as the result of marginalization and oppression.

Bigger Thomas, a young African American male, Twenty years old; vicious, vile and mean; he hates himself and all human society, especially that part of society which he attributes to making him a monster. Bigger Thomas is in rebellion on what he views as the white caste system; his crime is targeted at white society and the people that he views as being his oppressors. Bigger has the choice of taking on three roles, he can take on the role passivity designed for him by the southern whites and resolve his personal conflicts through the emotional catharsis of religion; or he can strive for and establish his own middle class society and thereby consciously or unconsciously become the white man's accomplice in oppression;

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.