The Horror of Bigger Thomas: The Perception of Form without Face in Richard Wright's Native Son

Abstract

Richard Wright's depiction of Thomas, a young African American whose social environment moves him murder and rape, is meant be both sympathetic and shocking. We, readers, are feel compassion for he is caught up in economic and racial forces he can neither comprehend nor control, but we are also be horrified at retaliatory answer: gaining of freedom and identity through brutally unfeeling acts of violence. At once we are both compelled and repelled by Bigger; he is both a lonely individual robbed of dignity and hope in a world where 'you [as a black man] ain't a man no more' (326), well a monstrous symbol of what could happen nation-wide if society refuses make American dream of freedom and opportunity open all. As Wright later wrote in How 'Bigger' Was Born, protagonist looms as a symbolic figure of American life, a figure who would hold within him prophecy of our future and the outlines of action and feeling which we would encounter on a vast scale in days come (xx-xxi). As such, this 1940 novel served a disturbing wake-up call a nation on verge of Civil Rights Movement (Rampersad i). However, rather than focusing on racial and economic forces that shape and provoke (a review of which can be found in Jerry Bryant's The Violence of Native Son), this study will instead examine what these forces have made of him and relationships with others when combined with Bigger's own natural disposition. Specifically, Thomas, throughout most of novel, is an individual who can no longer see or make connections with other people; Robert Butler notes concerning whole work, its most basic terms, Native Son dramatizes a bleak environment in which people touch each other only in violence, almost never in love or friendship (15). Hence, instead of real communication and interaction with others, Bigger's world is one of stereotypes and mere surfaces he categorizes other people (who have previously categorized him) in order gain some semblance of control over own life. Or, Louis Tremaine observes, Bigger sees only what allows him see. Bigger's interactions with others are conditioned by efforts meet expectations by conforming type. [And] . . . he can do this only by first typing those for whom he must play various roles (69). Thus, for Thomas, a person whose tangled duality has damaged him at very center of being (Butler 14), people of life, both black and white, are no longer people but things: mother someone deceive and put off concerning employment, girlfriend Bessie someone use (Native Son 131) for sex and a partner in crime, and white people another entity altogether: To and white people were not really people [at all]; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead, or like a swirling river stretching suddenly at one's feet in dark. As long he and black folks did not go beyond certain limits, there was no need that white force. But whether they feared it or not, each and every day of their lives they lived with it . . . [and] acknowledged its reality . . . [and] paid mute tribute it. (109) In this sense, Thomas and his kind are racist anyone else, for their and anger blind them humanity and individuality of those around them, and especially of white people, tiny drops in that deep swirling river. This is not say that is blame for this fear of both himself and of others [that] is an obstacle to real interaction and intimacy (Tremaine 66); Native Son shows with shocking force, a society that denies one's individuality - that, in Bigger's words, won't 'even let you feel what you want feel' (327) - through economic and racial restraints must bear at least some of responsibility for wheel of blood that follows (362). …