FREE ESSAY ON NATIVE SON

NATIVE SON

Richard Wright's novel, Native Son, stirred up a real controversy by shocking the
sensibilities of both black and white America. The protagonist, Bigger Thomas, is from
the lowest ring of society, and Wright does not blend him with any of the romantic
elements common to literary heroes. Bigger is what one expects him to be because of the
social conditions in which he lives: he is sullen, frightened, violent, hateful, and
resentful. He is the product of the condemnation the "white" society has brought upon
him. He is a "native son."
Native Son opens with an act of violence. The alarm clock abruptly awakens Bigger and his
family to their miserable reality--a rat-infested, one bedroom apartment in the urban
ghetto of Chicago. Bigger's battle with the rat reveals his capacity for brutality. He
crushes the rat's head after he has killed it with a skillet. Bigger represents a
persuasive racial stereotype of black men--violent, criminal, and cowardly. The powerful,
racist white majority considers his personality a natural characteristic of his race.
However, Wright shows how Bigger's consciousness is in fact shaped by his environment.
Bigger was not born a violent criminal, but became one in the unforgiving world of racism
and poverty in American society. 
Bigger's entire existence is a prison. His crowded, rat-infested apartment is only one of
his prison cells. He is imprisoned in the urban ghetto by racist rental policies. His own
consciousness is a prison. His entire life is filled by a sense of failure, inadequacy,
and most importantly, unyielding fear. Racist white society, his mother, and even Bigger
himself all believe that he is destined to meet a bad end. His relentless conviction of
an impending awful fate demonstrates that Bigger feels a nearly complete lack of control
over his life. He is permitted access only to menial jobs, substandard housing,
substandard food. Basically, white society permits him no choice but a substandard life.
Gus and Bigger play-act at being white. They alternately play at being a general, J.P.
Morgan and President. Gus and Bigger act out a skit in which the President wants to keep
the niggers under control. They associate whiteness with the power, wealth, and authority
to deny them control over their own lives. Bigger hates and fears whiteness. Therefore,
he has a latent desire to do violence to the force that oppresses him. Backed into a
corner, he is primed to lash out at the very force that restrains him through fear.
Buckley's campaign poster states the message that Bigger believes is written all over his
very existence: You Can't Win. His poster foreshadows Bigger's inevitable, losing
confrontation with white authority.
Bigger is alienated in the most profound sense. He is alienated from the middle-class
comforts of white society, alienated from his family, his friends, and ultimately,
himself by his overwhelming sense of impotent shame and frustration. He cannot bear to
feel the full range of his rage and misery, so he resorts to self-deception. The
hopelessness of this social reality threatens to utterly destroy him. Bigger has no
solidarity with his family, because their misery only accentuates his helplessness to
alleviate it. He has no solidarity with his friends. His fear and theirs perpetually keep
their relations full of tension and barely suppressed anger. He has no sense of
solidarity based on race except the same companionship based on misery that he has with
his family. He even robs other black people--who are almost certainly poor as
well--because he is too afraid to break a dangerous social taboo by robbing a white man.
Racism has conditioned not only Bigger's relationship with white, but his relationship
with other members of his race as well.
Wright wants to show that, considering the conditions of Bigger's existence, his violent
personality and his criminal behavior are not surprising. Bigger wants to feel like a
human being with a free, independent will. Crime is one avenue to obtain money without
submitting to white authority by taking the menial jobs assigned to him. His overwhelming
sense of fear arises from his feeling of impotence in the face of an unnamed, impending
doom. Crime is an act of rebellion, an affirmation of his independent will to act against
the voice of social authority. Violence and crime are the only things Bigger feels he can
use to declare his individual will as a human being. In Fate, Wright explicitly develops
the debate between free will and determinism. Neither Jan nor Bigger's lawyer Boris A.
Max condemn Bigger. They believe that, oppressed by a racist society, he had no choice
but to murder. However, Bigger will not concede that his actions were predestined. In
fact, the moment that defines Bigger as a free man is the murder itself; he discovers
that his actions have liberated him from his passive acceptance of fate. Bigger admits
killing Mary and is sentenced to death.