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The analysis of NATIVE SON BY RICHARD WRIGHT
Analysis of richard wright's native son
Racial tension in the 1920s
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“Native Son” is a novel written by Richard Wright that portrays a story of a 20 year old African- American, Bigger Thomas that takes place during 1930’s in Chicago’s South Side. Bigger and his family, that consists of his mother, his younger sister and brother named Vera Thomas and Buddy Thomas, live in a one room apartment in poverty with rats running around. Bigger and his group of friends plan to rob a white, rich man named Blum, but Bigger bails out when he thinks that he can have a better life if he takes a job that a rich man, Mr.Dalton offered him. Bigger is now a chauffeur for the Dalton family and he is the driver of Mr. Dalton’s daughter, Mary Dalton. Bigger goes out with Mary and her friend, Jan and they all drink. However, Bigger …show more content…
is responsible to take Mary to her room but both of them get engaged in way more than friends. Thomas Bigger than suffocates Mary with a pillow and burns her body.
Thomas Bigger was found guilty of killing Mary Dalton because throughout the story there are many events that trigger this outcome and this is also seen as Bigger is often put into the spotlight of showing his frustration and anger of racial issues that he often faces. The setting of the story takes place at a very crucial time period of segregation and privilege difference between whites and African Americans because not only were whites more superior and powerful than African Americans but they also had more privileges that had led to a great gap between their lifestyles and their rights they owned. One can say that Bigger is found guilty because the evidence is clearly depicted in the story as Bigger’s interaction was very negative towards white people and he only brought energy that was full of animosity and disgust towards them. Bigger believes that Mary is constantly ridiculing him and despises Mary for showing sympathy towards him as she attempts to apprehend the struggles that Bigger persistently …show more content…
faces. During the 1930’s, there was a segregation between whites and African-Americans, as whites dominated power and this causes Bigger to abhor them for being privileged and not working as hard to get a good job, a good salary or good life in general.
Bigger is very intolerant and was unable to bear whites because they had money, lived an American dreams and had the most superior power towards those that were African Americans which they were constantly looking for jobs, and tried to earn something to have a basic life. The whites had in their advantage to be part of a rich community, live a luxurious lifestyle and have jobs that placed them higher in the society class. But, in the other hand, African Americans were left out to live in old homes which created a very difficult situation because not only they were poor and did not have money, but they were being suppressed by the white power. Bigger feels trapped and he almost blames his community for bringing Bigger into a lifestyle that he is not happy with. Bigger sees that what is happening is very wrong and unfair to his human rights because he depicts his circumstances as a fault of segregation and the racism that whites are showing towards other people with a different color. He believes that what he is going through is inhumane and no one deserves to be placed in such condition because they belong to a different race. The message that Bigger wants to bring is that if people start to create barriers and gaps within a
society, then there wil problems sooner or later but if everyone comes together, they can build a community that is strong and powerful as a whole. Bigger and his friend, Gus, are hanging out and Bigger mentions how he hates the whites because they can be whoever they want, and that they live in the bottom of his stomach. When they are talking we can see a foreshadow of his intentions. Bigger tells Gus, “ I don’t know. I just feel that way. Every time I get to thinking about me being black and them being white, me being here and they being there, I feel something awful’s going to happen to me…(Wright.20)” and follows that up by saying, “Naw; it ain’t like something is going to happen to me. It’s.... It’s like I was going to do something I can’t help…” This explains the hatred he had towards them by saying that just the feeling of them being there and him being here makes him mad. We can see that what he says here is going to lead to something more. However, how my group and I interpreted these quotes was that he knew something bad was going to happen due to the hatred he had towards the whites, and he would not be able to do anything about it. He was jealous of how much money they made and their luxurious life, but when he was offered an education by Mrs. Dalton, Bigger declined. This is also able to show how angry and hateful he was all the time and always thought of his life in the most negative way, instead of wanting to be better for himself. Bigger stopped his education in eighth grade, leading to think that Mary is making fun of him. When Bigger goes to the interview for the job, he meets Mary Dalton for the first time. During that first encounter he believes that that she is going to be reason he will lose the job. “The girl came close to him and stopped opposite his chair. “Bigger, do you belong to a union?” she asked. “Now Mary!” said Mr. Dalton frowning.(Wright.53 ) Bigger becomes embarrassed when Mary asks him this questions because he does not know what a “union” is as he never continued his education, and thought that she was making fun of him because of his skin color which added more fuel to the hatred he already had for her. He thought this because since she was white, he had this idea that Mary thought of herself higher than Bigger and thought of Bigger as someone who was uneducated. In addition, even when she starts to be friendly towards him, he is very suspicious and thinks that she is just playing him. He has such a hard time trying to see Mary’s point of view because he is so secluded and thinks that everyone around him hates him. All Mary wanted was to give him a friendship, but he was not educated enough to know when someone wants to be friends or if she was making fun of him. He took this in the wrong way, and thought that Mary was making fun of him, because she was a rich, white women and he thought that because of that Mary thought of herself higher than Bigger. One of the most difficult positions that Bigger had was when Mary was trying to be his friend, and understand his lifestyle. When Mary asked him question about where and how he lives and if they go through life the same way, makes Bigger animosity for her even deeper because she was living her life, visiting new places whenever she wanted, and for that Bigger thought that this part of his life was something she will never understand. Mary did not have to go through anything in her life but for him everything he does is limited to a certain point, while she does not have that and can’t understand how it feels to be in Biggers shoes. In addition, she also asks Bigger to take her and Jan to his part of the community and dine at a place there, making him uncomfortable because whites never ate in his side of the town. Bigger was held more responsible when the three of them are out and they all drink, even though he is still working and was suppose to take Mary to her university. My group and I were not that successful on getting to our point, because the quotes we used in our opening statement were not that strong to support our points that we were making. Once we started the crossfire, the quotes we thought that they were strong did not help us make our point. The selection of those two quotes only helped us have evidence for one of the reasons why Bigger killed Mary. The other team had a very strong and unique opening statement as they compared it to a real life situation, and the quotes they used were strong. They were not hung up in one question as they were able to answer quickly and efficiently and ask other questions to make their argument better. However, for our team if we had a better selection of quotes in our opening speech, the arguments we made would have been stronger and supported with stronger evidence. My team and the opposing team were only going back and forth in one evidence and not moving on to other things that made Bigger kill Mary, which weakened our arguments.
Intro: Summary, Thesis, Highlighting main points (Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World) The tale of Native Son by Richard Wright follows the story of a young man by the name of Bigger Thomas who lives in the 1930’s. In the beginning of the story, we meet Bigger a young, angry frustrated black man who lives with his mother, brother and sister in a cramped apartment in New York. The story is narrated in a limited third-person voice that focuses on Bigger Thomas’s thoughts and feelings. The story is told almost exclusively from Bigger’s perspective. In recent years, the
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.
Older and modern societies tend to have organized castes and hierarchies designed to encompass everyone in society. This is demonstrated in Richard Wright’s acclaimed novel, Native Son. The novel follows the life of a twenty year old African American man named Bigger Thomas, and his experiences living as a black man in 1930s Chicago, Illinois. Unfortunately, he commits two unlawful killings of women, mostly as a result of the pressure and paranoia that had been following him from a young age. He is tried and convicted of the deaths, and is sentenced to die as a result.
“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...
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.
The simplest method Wright uses to produce sympathy is the portrayal of the hatred and intolerance shown toward Thomas as a black criminal. This first occurs when Bigger is immediately suspected as being involved in Mary Dalton’s disappearance. Mr. Britten suspects that Bigger is guilty and only ceases his attacks when Bigger casts enough suspicion on Jan to convince Mr. Dalton. Britten explains, "To me, a nigger’s a nigger" (Wright 154). Because of Bigger’s blackness, it is immediately assumed that he is responsible in some capacity. This assumption causes the reader to sympathize with Bigger. While only a kidnapping or possible murder are being investigated, once Bigger is fingered as the culprit, the newspapers say the incident is "possibly a sex crime" (228). Eleven pages later, Wright depicts bold black headlines proclaiming a "rapist" (239) on the loose. Wright evokes compassion for Bigger, knowing that he is this time unjustly accused. The reader is greatly moved when Chicago’s citizens direct all their racial hatred directly at Bigger. The shouts "Kill him! Lynch him! That black sonofabitch! Kill that black ape!" (253) immediately after his capture encourage a concern for Bigger’s well-being. Wright intends for the reader to extend this fear for the safety of Bigger toward the entire black community. The reader’s sympathy is further encouraged when the reader remembers that all this hatred has been spurred by an accident.
Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1986. Kinnamon, Kenneth, ed., pp. 113-117 New Essays on Native Sons. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990. Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds.
Richard Wright’s “Big Boy Leaves Home” confronts a young black person’s forced maturation at the hands of unsympathetic whites. Through his almost at times first person descriptions, Wright makes Big Boy a hero to us. Big Boy hovers between boyhood and adulthood throughout the story, and his innocence is lost just in time for him to survive. Singled out for being larger than his friends, he is the last to stand, withstanding bouts with white men, a snake, and a dog, as we are forced to confront the different levels of nature and its inherent violence.
In Darryl Pinckney’s discerning critical essay, “Richard Wright: The Unnatural History of a Native Son,” Pinckney states that all of Wright’s books contain the themes of violence, inhumanity, rage, and fear. Wright writes about these themes because he expresses, in his books, his convictions about his own struggles with racial oppression, the “brutal realities of his early life.” Pinckney claims that Wright’s works are unique for Wright’s works did not attempt to incite whites to acknowledge blacks. Wright does not write to preach that blacks are equal to whites. The characters in Wright’s works, including Bigger Thomas from Native Son, are not all pure in heart; the characters have psychological burdens and act upon their burdens. For instance, Bigger Thomas, long under racial oppression, accidentally suffocates Mary Dalton in her room for fear that he will be discriminated against and charged with the rape of Mary Dalton. Also, according to Pinckney, although the characters of Wright’s books are under these psychological burdens, they always have “futile hopes [and] desires.” At the end of Native Son, Bigger is enlightened by the way his lawyer Max treats him, with the respect of a human being. Bigger then desires nothing but to live, but he has been sentenced to death.
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 Thomas feels trapped long before he is incarcerated for killing Mary Dalton. He is trapped in an overpriced apartment with his family and trapped in a white world he has no hope of changing. He knows that he is predisposed to receiving unfair treatment because he is black, but he still always feels as though he is headed for an unpleasant end. The three sections that make up the novel Native Son by Richard Wright, “Fear,” “Flight” and “Fate,” imply a continuous and pervasive cycle throughout Bigger’s life that ultimately leads him to murder.
Richard Wright was a novelist who wrote about being black in American. He used his writings as a form of advertisement to civilize communism. Being that he was born into slavery he experienced oppression since birth. His first published novel was Uncle Tom’s Children and the book consisted of different short stories of racial oppression in the South such as lynching and the KKK. One of his most defining novels is Black Boy as he wrote about the cultural, political, racial, religion, and social issues of the late 19th century.
Bigger Thomas as America’s Native Son. In the novel the Native Son, the author Richard Wright explores racism and oppression in American society. Wright skillfully merges his narrative voice into Bigger Thomas so that the reader can also feel how the pressure and racism affects the feelings, thoughts, self-image, and life of a Negro person. Bigger is a tragic product of American imperialism and exploitation in a modern world.
For example, Bigger was motivated to rob the white man’s convenience store, but knew that it was socially wrong to associate himself with a white person in any place or time. Therefore, he abandoned the thought and decided to seek an alternative to get money, which resulted in working for the Daltons. The Jim Crow laws consisted of many crucial notions that targeted the black society in the United States. These types of laws did not only have a tremendous influence in society during this period, but also in American literature. Numerous authors were greatly affected by unfortunate events that they decided to publish novels in regards to what was happening in the country. One author being Richard Wright, who wrote Native Son, a novel about a black teenager named Thomas “Bigger”. Bigger is displayed as a threat to society because of his skin color and his actions later in the novel. Because Bigger is born into a black family, he is limited to what he can do in society and the way in which others will see him. Many times throughout the book, examples of Bigger coming across moments of tension are evident. For example, when Bigger accompanies Mary Dalton and her boyfriend to a restaurant in a black neighborhood, Bigger tries to avoid being recognized because he does want to be seen with white folks. He does not want to be seen with
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.