Free Native Son Essays: Bigger as a Black Everyman

Bigger as a Black Everyman in Native Son

The life of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright's Native Son is not one with which most of us can relate. It

is marked by excessive violence, oppression, and a lack of hope for the future. Despite this difference

from my own life and the lives of my privileged classmates, I would argue that Bigger's experience is

somewhat universal, His is not a unique, individual experience, but rather one that is representative of

the world of a young black man. If Bigger were alive today, perhaps he would be a “Gangsta Rapper”

and express his rage through music instead of violence.

Just as Max did in defending Bigger during his trial and inevitable conviction, Wright uses

Bigger as an example for how African Americans have been treated. True, the vast majority of African

Americans do not commit the awful crimes which Bigger has committed, but the crimes themselves,

and in fact the details of Bigger's life are not really that important in the scheme of things. To say that

Bigger's life is unimportant sounds cold and inhuman, to say the least, but let me explain what I mean.

I see Native Son as, apart from a wonderful story in itself, an extended example of how institutional and

individual racism has created a society which leaves the Bigger Thomas's of the world optionless.

From the beginning of the book when we see Bigger fighting a huge rat which has invaded his

rundown apartment, we see the double significance of the image. At once there is the vision of Bigger

as having to fend for his life on a daily basis and of Bigger as a trapped rat, cornered, like he would

soon find himself after the murder of Mary. This is not to say that he deserves no blame for the cold-

blooded murder of a young girl-- he does, of course he does, but he was also set up. He was not set

up in some sort of sting or framing, but he was set up to fail somehow or other by the status allocated to

him to him by society. It is for this reason that I say that the specific details of Bigger's life are not as

important as the fact that smehow he was destined to fail.

Just to see to what a great extent institutional racism and personal choice and the implications of

each play into Bigger's life, let's briefly plot his story. Because of instututional racism, Bigger Thomas a

(necessarily poor) black man takes a job working for rich white people out of sheer necessity. Hoping

to keep the job, he follows the directions given him by his boss's daughter, then due to the situation ,

finds himself in her room, with her passed out drunk and him contemplating violating her. In order to

avoid detection by her mother he accidentally smothers her with her pillow. Technically, this is a

personal action complicated by the institutional taboo-- no, crime-- of a black man being caught in a

white woman's room, no matter what the reason. Knowing that he will be blamed for the crime because

of his color ( another example of institutional racism), he hides the crime, deflects guilt from hiself, then

tries ti make a personal profit through the ransom note (all personal actions). His plan, however,

backfires, and in turn results for a city-wide search of all African Americans and an infringement on

their rights simply because they happen to share the same skin color as Bigger Thomas. Bigger is then

caught and tried, not as a man defending himself against a charge of murder, but as a poor black man

guilty of the brutal rape and murder of both a black woman and a young, rich white woman.

This sort of analysis, however simplistic it must needs be in the interest of brevity, challenges the

reader to look at Native Son not as a novel, but as a commentary on the stae of racism, especially

institutional racism, in our society. In a case like Bigger's, although this is not an excuse, it does not

seem so hard to believe that a man could do such horrible crimes since he has grown up in a life

situation which has left him optionless.

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MLA Citation:

"Free Native Son Essays: Bigger as a Black Everyman." 123HelpMe.com. 12 Nov 2015

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