The Destructive Effects Of Racism On Bigger — страница 2

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opportunities and luxuries of the white world. “I could fly a plane if I had a chance, ‘Bigger said. ‘If you wasn’t black and if you had some money and if they’d let you go to aviation school, you could fly a plane,’ Gus said” [sic] (Wright Native 20). He hates to be reminded of this condition and hates those who do remind him. White people constantly remind Bigger that he cannot succeed (Discovering 5). “I feel like somebody’s poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Goddammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we don’t. They do things and we can’t. It’s just like living in jail. Half the time I feel like I’m on the outside of the world peeping in through a knot-hole in the fence…”[sic] (Wright Native

22). Even though Mary Dalton and her communist boyfriend, Jan, try to treat Bigger as an equal, they cannot escape his hatred. Mary and Jan frighten Bigger by their strange actions. Their actions are “something he can only interpret as mockery” (Discovering 3). “Was she laughing at him? Were they making fun of him? Why couldn’t they leave him alone? He wasn’t bothering them” (Wright Native 61). Bigger’s hatred toward Mary, Jan, and other white people comes from more than the fact that he is oppressed or feels as he is being mocked. Bigger wants’ people to look past his black skin and see who he really is. He wants to be given a chance. Bigger hates white people because they do not see him as an individual person with his own thoughts and feelings. When they see

Bigger, they see black (Margolies Study 84). Wright portrays Bigger as a coward who gets his security from harming others, even his own friends. This trait makes Bigger unlovable. “He is not simply weak, he is an outright coward. He is a sullen bully” (Margolies Study 72). Though his actions are violent, he reacts to circumstances out of fear of the consequences. “Bigger’s choices are moral and metaphysical — not political or racial. He might have chosen love or submission, instead he elected violence and death as a sign of his being…”(Margolies Art 2-3). “Slowly, Gus Stood. Bigger held the open blade an inch from Gus’s lips. ‘Lick it,’ Bigger said, his body tingling with elation. Gus’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Lick it, I said! You think I’m playing?

“(Wright Native 40-41). Wright also uses Bigger’s destructive behavior to make him unlovable. Bigger takes what he wants at the expense of others. Anyone opposing him has to fight. “Never was he happier than when he had someone cornered and at his mercy; it seemed the deepest meaning of his squalid life was at such times” (Wright Bigger 1X). This type of behavior has destructive effects on Bigger: “…he always oscillated between moods of intense elation and depression” (Wright Bigger X). Wright’s protagonist is purposefully not an educated or sophisticated man. He creates a character that mirrors the preconceived image of Blacks in the era that he was writing (Discovering 2-3). The monster in Native Son reflects the indifferent, impersonal, and industrialized

society that existed in Wright’s day.. The similarities between Bigger and people today, white and black, are shocking. “It is not that Bigger Thomas is so different from us’ it is that he is so much like us” (Margolies Art 4). Bigger Thomas is on a quest for freedom. He is seeking ways to free himself from the bonds that hold him to the degraded, impoverished, restricted life that he has. Thomas understands that blacks should not let the white man’s prejudice confine them. They should overcome these boundaries and not submit themselves to the preconceived image that the white society has of them (Smith 393). Bigger wants “to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed a chance to live like

others, even though he was black” (Wright Native 226). Bigger Thomas finds freedom through murder. “After the murder of Mary Dalton, Bigger’s life seems to have a purpose” (Sanders 1). Through his crime he gains a confidence that he has not been able to find merely through violence. “There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had; something spread in front of him and something spread out in back; and never in his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together; never had he felt a sense of wholeness” (Wright Native 225). Richard Wright uses his surroundings and his acquaintances to create his fictional world. For this