In Richard Wright’s Native Son, “rat metaphor” is referring to the opening scene of in which Bigger’s mother catches sight of a rat running around in their family bedroom. The mother shrieks in fear, and demands that Bigger kill it. Bigger chases the rat around the room with a skillet, skillfully dodging the rat’s feeble attempts at attacking Bigger, until finally he through the skillet and struck the rat dead. The entire passage is dramatic, with detailed descriptions on the rat’s movements and reactions. When Bigger steps towards the rat, it “emitted a long thin song of defiance, its black beady eyes glittering, its tiny forefeet pawing the air restlessly.” The rat runs to the other side of the room, and then “it reared once more and bared …show more content…
When Bigger’s mother discovers the rat and screams, it darts around the room looking for a place to hide. Bigger is apprehensive about going toe-to-toe with the rat and hitting it with a skillet, but also doesn’t want to throw it in case he misses. Even though Bigger is stronger than the rat, he still is afraid the rate could escape and be free. Similar to the rat, Bigger fears white people and the authority they hold over him. The relationship between Bigger and the rat, therefore, is based on mutual fear, just as the relationship between black people and white people in Native Son is based on mutual fear. In the beginning of the book, Bigger comes up with a plan to rob a store owned by a white man, and then backs out of it at the last second because he is afraid to rob a white man. Later, after realizing he had accidentally killed Mary, “[t]he reality of the room fell from him; the vast city of white people that sprawled outside took it’s place... He was a murderer, a Negro murderer, a black murderer. He had killed a white woman.” (pg 100) What Bigger does not know is that white people fear him as well; they fear black people’s potential to rise up and fight oppression rather than cower in fear of it. As spoken by Mr. Max in his closing argument and referring to the white people, “If that mob outdoors is afraid of one man, what will …show more content…
On the surface, the reader meant to feel apathetic towards Bigger. His personality is not one that people feel naturally empathetic for; even in today’s world, Bigger would be written off as a “bum” and “the reason why Civil Rights is not taken seriously”. He does not fit into the mold of what white society wants black people to be; some people, like the Daltons, want black people to be grateful towards them for the “donations” they gave, and others like Britten and Buckley want black people to know their place in this world, which is below white people. This may seem counterintuitive to Wright’s goal as a Civil Rights activist and active supporter of Communism, and maybe to some degree it is, but the purpose of writing Bigger as a person whose only method of dealing with conflict is violence is to prove that it is not right to pick and choose what black lives to care about. If Wright made a character that, in the eyes of most (white) readers, would’ve been less of a “menace to society” he would’ve been watering down his argument. The point of Native Son is that all black people, whether they be submissive or assertive, spiteful or
In Richard Wright’s Native Son, Bigger Thomas attempts to gain power over his environment through violence whenever he is in a position to do so.
The actions committed by Bigger could be explained by the environment he grew up in. Living in poverty all his life because of a racial hierarchy he fit at the bottom of greatly
The theme that Native Son author Richard Wright puts in this story is that the white community makes Bigger act the way he does, that through the communities actions, Bigger does all the things he is accused of doing. The theme that I present is that Bigger only acts the way that he did because of the influences that the white community has had on him accepted by everyone. When Bigger gets the acceptance and love he has always wanted, he acts like he does not know what to do, because really, he does not. In Native Son, Bigger uses his instincts and acts like the white people around him have formed him to act. They way that he has been formed to act is to not trust anyone. Bigger gets the acceptance and love he wanted from Mary and Jan, but he still hates them and when they try to really get to know him, he ends up hurting them. He is scared of them simply because he has never experienced these feelings before, and it brings attention to him from himself and others. Once Bigger accidentally kills Mary, he feels for the first time in his life that he is a person and that he has done something that somebody will recognize, but unfortunately it is murder. When Mrs. Dalton walks in and is about to tell Mary good night, Bigger becomes scared stiff with fear that he will be caught committing a crime, let alone rape. If Mrs. Dalton finds out he is in there he will be caught so he tries to cover it up and accidentally kills Mary. The police ask why he did not just tell Mrs. Dalton that he was in the room, Bigger replies and says he was filled with so much fear that he did not know what else to do and that he did not mean to kill Mary. He was so scared of getting caught or doing something wrong that he just tried to cover it up. This is one of the things that white people have been teaching him since he can remember. The white people have been teaching him to just cover things up by how the whites act to the blacks. If a white man does something bad to a black man the white man just covers it up a little and everything goes back to normal.
Just as Max did in defending Bigger during his trial and inevitable conviction, Wright uses Bigger as an example for how African Americans have been treated. True, the vast majority of African Americans do not commit the awful crimes which Bigger has committed, but the crimes themselves, and in fact the details of Bigger's life are not really that important in the scheme of thin...
“Notes of a Native Son” is faceted with many ideas and arguments. The essay begins with Baldwin recounting July 29, 1943. The day his father died and his mother bore her last child (63). Baldwin shares his fathers’ past and of the hate and bitterness that filled him and how Baldwin realizes that it may soon fill him also. Baldwin spends the rest of the essay mostly analyzing his experiences and the behavior and mentality of his father, of whom he seemed to dislike. He comes to the conclusion that one must hold true two ideas: “. . . acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is and men as they are: in light of this idea... injustice is...
Throughout the history of writing, cats have symbolized craftiness, misfortune, deceit and death. Richard Wright creates no exception to this reputation in his novel Native Son. Bigger Thomas, a young, depressed black man, is placed in an awkward position when he is interviewed for a job with the Daltons, a wealthy white family. The Dalton's unnamed white cat, gazes at Bigger, symbolizing initially white society. This gazing causes Bigger to feel angry and awkward so that is comes to assume a far more critical symbolic level on the night of Mary Dalton's murder. His feelings lead him to express himself overtly in violence, specifically Bigger's killing of Mary. In effect, the Dalton's cat kills Mary.
Two rats and a cat are used as symbols in Richard Wright's Native Son. The rats, one found in an alley and the other in Bigger's apartment, symbolize Bigger. Mrs. Dalton's white cat represents white society, which often takes the form of a singular character. "Parallels are drawn between these animals and the characters they represent at key moments during the novel" (Kinnamon 118). These parallels help the reader identify with Bigger and understand why he acts the way he does. The animal imagery in Native Son explains some of Bigger's behavior and generates sympathy for Bigger and fear of whites.
Nature is defined as the natural earth and the things on it or the essence of a person or thing. Nature is believed to be the major reason for the existence of everything. Racism is the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish one race as inferior or superior to another race or races. Nature has a major role in the promotion of racism over time. “Uncle Tom’s Children,” written by Richard Wright, implicitly explains some of the roles of nature in promoting racism especially in the Jim Crow Era. Whites tried to use nature against blacks in order to aggravate their suffering. They enacted various laws that did not allow blacks to live freely. In most cases,
The effects of racism can cause an individual to be subjected to unfair treatment and can cause one to suffer psychological damage and harbor anger and resentment towards the oppressor. Bigger is a twenty year old man that lives in a cramped rat infested apartment with his mother and 2 younger siblings. Due to the racist real estate market, Bigger's family has only beat down dilapidated projects of south side Chicago to live in. poor and uneducated, bigger has little options to make a better life for him and his families. having been brought up in 1930's the racially prejudice America, bigger is burdened with the reality that he has no control over his life and that he cannot aspire to anything more than menial labor as an servant. Or his other option which are petty crimes with his gang.
Bigger embodies one of humankind’s greatest tragedies of how mass oppression permeates all aspects of the lives of the oppressed and the oppressor, creating a world of misunderstanding, ignorance, and suffering. The novel is loaded with a plethora of images of a hostile white world. Wright shows how white racism affects the behavior, feelings, and thoughts of Bigger. “Everytime I think about it, I feel like somebody’s poking a red-hot iron down my throat. We live here and they live there.
The essay “Notes of a Native Son” takes place at a very volatile time in history. The story was written during a time of hate and discrimination toward African Americans in the United States. James Baldwin, the author of this work is African American himself. His writing, along with his thoughts and ideas were greatly influenced by the events happening at the time. At the beginning of the essay, Baldwin makes a point to mention that it was the summer of 1943 and that race riots were occurring in Detroit. The story itself takes place in Harlem, a predominantly black area experiencing much of the hatred and inequalities that many African-Americans were facing throughout the country. This marks the beginning of a long narrative section that Baldwin introduces his readers to before going into any analysis at all.
In Native Son, Richard Wright introduces Bigger Thomas, a liar and a thief. Wright evokes sympathy for this man despite the fact that he commits two murders. Through the reactions of others to his actions and through his own reactions to what he has done, the author creates compassion in the reader towards Bigger to help convey the desperate state of Black Americans in the 1930’s.
After analyzing a few synopses of Richard Wright’s works, it is clear that he used violence to make his political statements. It is not just the actions of Wright’s characters in The Native Son and Uncle Tom’s Children that are violent; in many cases, Wright himself seems very sensitive to any sort of racial provocation. In The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, he details a few of his encounters with racial oppression. Many of them feature violence, and his reflections of his experiences become less and less emotional, almost as of this was all he had come to expect from whites.
As a young man Bigger was a magnet to trouble; however, his identity is unveiled once he attains a job at the home of the Dalton’s. Operating in the mind of double-consciousness prompts two murders, the rape of his girlfriend and fleet from the police; result in Bigger facing a trail for such charges. Wright depicts Bigger, as uncertain of his actions, “I didn’t want to kill,” Bigger shouts. “But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill”(Native Son
In his novel, Native Son, Richard Wright favors short, simple, blunt sentences that help maintain the quick narrative pace of the novel, at least in the first two books. For example, in the following passage: "He licked his lips; he was thirsty. He looked at his watch; it was ten past eight. He would go to the kitchen and get a drink of water and then drive the car out of the garage. " Wright's imagery is often brutal and elemental, as seen in his frequently repeated references to fire, snow, and Mary's bloody head.