Fiction concepts and narrative traditions

¶ … Richard Wright's Native Son, that character of Bigger is at times both a victim and a sacrificial figure. The horrible events of his life are shaped by the hopelessness and racism of his environment. As such, Wright manages to create a form of compassion for Bigger, a man whose life was largely predetermined by his environment. Eventually, Bigger realizes that a violent attack against white society was the only option available to him, in the overwhelming despair and hopelessness of the inner city. Wright manages to create a feeling of compassion and understanding, if not for the horrible acts of Bigger himself, but for the racism and hopelessness of his situation.

Richard Wright was born in 1908 in Adams County, Mississippi into a life of poverty and racial discrimination that would eventually color his writing. He was the eldest of two boys, and knew from the age of 15 that he wanted to be a writer. In keeping with the controversy that surrounded his books, Wright married a white woman, Ellen Poplar. In all, Wright wrote 16 books, including The Outsider and American Hunger. Native Son was his most popular work, selling an impressive 250,000 hardcover copies in six weeks. Wright died at the age of 52 of a heart attack in Paris, France (Haskins).

Native Son is a powerful book that delves deeply into the poverty and injustice that influences our lives. The main Character, Bigger Thomas is consumed by the hopelessness and despair of his life.

A child of his circumstances, who is constantly in trouble ranging from larceny to assault, Bigger seems destined for jail. Eventually, Bigger kills a young white woman in a moment of panic and fear, and from that time he is caught in a series of events that pull him deeper in to despair. Most of the novel takes place as Bigger is headed for jail for the murder and rape of the young woman.

Although white people in the novel try to help Bigger, their efforts are tinged by selfish motives. In the novel, Wright compellingly paints a picture of a white segregationist society that only cares for the black community when it impacts the white community. When Bigger works in a Boy's Club, he comes to the ultimate realization that his job was motivated by white selfishness. Notes Wright, "the rich folk who were paying my wages did not really give a good goddamn about Bigger... their kindness was prompted at bottom by a selfish motive. They were paying me to distract Bigger with ping-pong, checkers, swimming, marbles, and baseball in order that he might not roam the streets and harm the valuable white property which adjoined the Black Belt.

In Native Son, Wright portrays Bigger as a cruel and fierce man. While the initial murder of the white girl Mary Dalton is accidental, Bigger's actions quickly reveal the cruelty inherent in his character. Afraid of being blamed for Mary's murder, he beheads and burns her body and tries to shift the blame to her boyfriend, Jan. Invigorated by the murder, Bigger concocts a plan to exhort ransom money for the murdered girl. Eventually, Bigger kills his girlfriend in order to ensure her silence.

Throughout Native Son, Bigger is portrayed as both a victim and a sacrificial figure. Certainly, as a black man, Bigger is the victim of the blatant and cruel racism of the time. He falls easily into the hopelessness of life in the inner city, and spends his days hanging around the pool hall with his friends. Bigger is largely unredeemed and pitiful; he is without direction or responsibility. Notes Wright "As long as (Bigger) could remember, he had never been responsible to anyone. The moment a situation became so that it exacted something of him, he rebelled." With an eighth-grade education and a network of family and friends as caught up in the poverty and hopelessness as he is, Bigger stands very little real hope of overcoming the sadness that is his life.

Bigger is also clearly portrayed as a sacrificial figure in the novel. He simply reacts to his situation, mindlessly, and without hope. He seems to almost be a sacrifice to the racism and hopelessness of his time. When he is confronted by his family, when he is in jail, he thinks that they should be glad that he was a murderer. Thinks Bigger of his plight, "Had he not taken fully upon himself the crime of being black?" (Wright).

Wright is careful to craft the story so the events of Bigger's life seem almost out of Bigger's control. Bigger Thomas is trapped by the frustration and poverty of his life. Bigger grows up in a society of racism and hopelessness, and ultimately becomes a product of this environment. As Bigger looks back over the course of his life, he eventually decides that lashing out violently against white society was the only possibility that was open to him. Bigger's attorney clearly reflects this belief in his closing statement, where he notes of Bigger, "It was the first full act of his life; it was the most meaningful, exciting and stirring thing that had ever happened to him. He accepted it because it made him free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act and to feel that his actions carried weight" (Wright).

Despite Bigger's cruel and horribly violent actions, Wright seems to want the reader to develop compassion for Bigger. We first see Bigger as a hopeless and unredeemed 20-year-old man, who lives at home with his parents, and spends his days planning robberies, and hanging around with his friends. Bigger is a violent, aggressive and uncaring criminal.

Notes Wright, "(Bigger) passed his days trying to defeat or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared." It is only after the murder of the white girl, Mary Dalton that Bigger begins to feel alive. Notes Wright, "(Bigger) was more alive than he could ever remember having been... The feeling of being always enclosed in the stifling embrace of an invisible force had gone from him."

Compassion for Bigger comes from an understanding that society has created Bigger, a man whose dreams and humanity is so eroded that he cannot feel compassion himself. After being caught for the murder of the white girl Mary, Bigger cries "It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder.... What I killed for must've been good!" Violence is all that Bigger has ever known, and it is through violence that Bigger feels he must define his meaning in this life.