Native Son Essay: Bigger as a Reflection of Society

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Recommended: Richard Wright views on racism in Native Sons

Bigger as a Reflection of Society in Native Son

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 face. In the first book, Wright tells the reader "these were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger -- like water ebbing and flowing from the tug of a far-away, invisible force" (p.31). Bigger is controlled by forces that he cannot tangibly understand. The society seems to bear down upon him like a weight, and only by being nonconformist to all philosophies does Bigger feel that he can throw off that weight of oppression and misunderstanding.

Bigger's many acts of violence are, in effect, a quest for a soul. He desires an identity that is his alone. Both the white and the black communities have robbed him of dignity, identity, and individuality. The human side of the city is closed to him, and for the most part Bigger relates more to the faceless mass of the buildings and the mute body of the city than to another human being. He constantly sums up his feelings of frustration as wan...

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...ght's Art of Tragedy. Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1986.

Kinnamon, Keneth and Michel Fabre, eds. Conversations with Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1993.

Kinnamon, Keneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright: A Study Literature and Society. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1973.

Kinnamon, Keneth, ed. New Essays on Native Son. New York: Cambridge UP, 1990.

Macksey, Richard and Frank E. Moorer, eds. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1984.

Margolies, Edward. The Art of Richard Wright. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1969.

Miller, Eugene E. Voice of a Native Son: The Poetics of Richard Wright. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990.

Rampersad, Arnold, ed. Richard Wright: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995.

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