UW ENGL 591

Tumblr for English 591: Race and Sexuality, Spring 2014

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"Snow In Native Son" Post 4 by Andrew Edstrom

In Native Son, Richard Wright masterfully conveys the philosophical, psychological and cultural forces at work in the descent of Bigger Thomas through descriptions of the physical landscape in which the story takes place. This is especially evident in the use of snow and otherwise frozen conditions to represent the African-American perception of whites as a “not really people,” but a “great natural force” (114). Through the metaphor of winter conditions, Wright conveys both Bigger’s feelings of hopelessness in the face of the overwhelmingly oppressive nature of his white pursuers, and the more universal African-American feelings of hopelessness in the face of White America during this cultural moment.

Wright goes to great lengths to draw such a connection between whites and wintery conditions through the parallel sequencing of Bigger’s crimes and the growing snowstorm. By no coincidence, the snowfall begins at the precise moment that Bigger murders Mary Dalton. When he leaves the house, he notices “a few fine flakes of snow were floating down” (93). The snow accumulates through Bigger’s flight, as do his crimes. The growing snow drifts and cold serve all as a metaphor for Bigger’s growing feeling that there is no escape from the white pursuers closing in on him, until the scene in which he is finally captured on the “snow-covered roof” (267), in large part thanks to the frozen conditions. At the end of his flight, he lays in the snow in hiding, completely engulfed by the overwhelming stopping power of the cold, before he slides on the ice as he tries to escape, struggles to climb a frigid ladder, and is symbolically sprayed with unbearably cold water, at which point he is finally captured by his white pursuers. Through the parallel arcs of the weather and Bigger’s descent, Wright invites the reader to draw a symbolic connection between the mounting, eerie white of snowy Chicago and Bigger’s increasingly claustrophobic feeling that there is nowhere to run. 

The connection between whites and snow is made more general in a scene where Wright juxtaposes black people and white snow, suggesting the snow is not only a metaphor for Bigger’s sense of being trapped, but for the universal feeling of hopelessness within the African-American community during this cultural moment. “He lifted his eyes and saw black people upon the snow-covered sidewalks. These people had feelings of fear and shame like him....To Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead,” (114). Two factors here confirm Wright’s intention. First, Wright frames whites as a “great natural force” much like weather patterns. Secondly, he places this comparison within a paragraph beginning with the juxtaposition of “black people” in the white snow. By combining these two factors, Wright clearly signals for readers to interpret the frozen landscape as a symbol for the general black feeling of hopelessness in this cultural moment.

This can be tied to the other texts we have read in our texts, such as Jean Toomer’s Cane. Similarly to Wright, Toomer uses the physical landscape of the text to symbolically represent African-American feelings of hopelessness and other problems. By casting the inner struggles of their characters on the descriptions of the world, these authors paint a more complete picture of the problems of race with which they concern their novels.

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"Healthy Release Valves for Bigger Thomas" Post 3 by Andrew Edstrom

Native Son details the psychology of Bigger Thomas. It particularly focuses on the way that he feels trapped, as if there is no space for his body and desires in the white man’s world. Bigger justifies destructive actions based on feeling trapped: “I hurt folks ‘cause I felt I had to; that’s all. They was crowding me too close; they wouldn’t give me no room...I was always wanting something and feeling that nobody would let me have it. So I fought ‘em” (425). However, Wright demonstrates that there are healthy outlets for Bigger’s inner tension in two points at the novel: 1) The scene in which Bigger makes love to Bessie, and 2) the scene in which Bigger is waiting for Gus before they are planning to hold up Blums. After each of these scenes, black characters become angry with Bigger because of his choice to be violent. Through the anger of Bigger’s peers, Wright condemns Bigger’s destructive actions and argues that however repressive the cultural moment may have been, Bigger had other means of channeling his inner tension.

On both occasions, Bigger experiences an explosion of possibility. When Bigger makes love to Bessie, Wright does not describe the act itself. Instead, he guides Bigger through an imagining of soothing, open spaces. Bigger is “willingly dragged into a warm night sea...clinging close to a fountain whose warm waters washed and cleaned his senses...to end the tiredness and to reforge in him a new sense of time and space;—after he had been tossed to dry upon a warm sunlit rock under a white sky” (135). Wright describes this whole scene in one overflowing sentence with minimal punctuation to accentuate Bigger’s feeling of freedom and inner peace. Similarly, when Bigger is waiting for Gus, Wright presents Bigger with a wide array of healthy actions he could take to “focus his attention and drain off his energies” (28). He could “run...or listen to some swing music. Or laugh or joke. Or read a Real Detective Story Magazine. Or go to a movie” (28). Wright deliberately ties these scenes together by proposing that Bigger could “visit Bessie,” and by alluding to the imagined spaces of Bigger’s night with Bessie. Again, he describes Bigger’s inner state as “water ebbing and flowing.” These parallel arrays of possibility stand in stark contrast to Bigger’s overwhelming sense of claustrophobia in the rest of the novel, showing there is indeed space for Bigger’s body and desires in the world.

Wright condemns Bigger’s destructive actions through the reactions of his equally oppressed peers. After each scene, characters react negatively to the way Bigger responds to his circumstances. Immediately after making love to Bessie, Bigger hatches a plan to falsely kidnap Mary in order to gain ransom money. As soon as he does so, Bessie starts a fight with Bigger, saying “You didn’t have to come here tonight” (138). After a freeing moment of mutual intimacy, the connection is broken by his wicked plot. Through this sequence of events, Wright argues that Bigger’s ultimate demise stems from his reactions to cultural oppression even more than it stems from the oppression itself. This same sequence is present in the scene in which Bigger awaits Gus. Though Bigger imagines a wide array of healthy outlets for his inner tension, he instead responds “through action so violent that it would make him forget...It was the violent action that followed that made Gus and Jack and G.H. hate and fear him” (29). Gus and Jack and G.H. experience the same hopeless oppression as Bigger, but they do not react nearly as violently. They despise him for the way he addresses his problems. Wright uses these characters to argue that Bigger is not justified in his actions.

Despite the overwhelming hopelessness of this cultural moment, these two scenes make it clear there were still safe and healthy means of self-expression. The tension that Bigger felt could have been directed elsewhere, and does not in any way justify his horrendous actions. 

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"Re: How Children Understand Racism by Sam Zisser" Comment 8 by Andrew Edstrom

Sam’s post covered a lot of ground, and among other things he has done a very good job at restating Lillian Smith’s economic explanation of the motivations behind the South’s tenacious racism. From the inception of the southern colonies, the southern economy was utterly dependent on slavery. The extent of this dependence is evidenced by the complete collapse of the southern economy that took place after the abolishment of slavery. Without all of that free labor, the south could not compete with the factories of the north. 

The South’s absolute need of slavery helps explain why its citizens clutched their racist views so close. As Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” The entire Southern livelihood was built on the axiom that blacks were inferior, and thus needed to be strong-armed by wiser men of more suitable complexion. If Southerners had stopped to question this basic assumption, they would have had no choice but to free their slaves, causing them to lose out on all that labor, go broke, and quickly starve to death. There was no time to challenge such a fundamental belief. There was no wiggle-room on the slavery question.

This economic explanation of the motives behind southern slavery, coupled with Smith’s argument that familial ties forced children to absorb the beliefs of their parents, help explain why it was so impossible to get the South to budge on their racist beliefs, even after the abolishment of slavery. Though children may have experienced guilt about the basic injustice of racism early in life, it was still unacceptable to question such a fundamental truth as the supposed inferiority of the black race. The external pressures were simply too great for them to see it otherwise.

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"Re: Re: Why I’ll Never Apologize for my White Male Privilege by Joshua Zent." Comment 7 by Andrew Edstrom

The class discussion around Tal Fortgang’s article has been very helpful, and I would like to thank everyone for their honest contributions and personal stories. Though Joshua’s idea of invisible passing is fascinating, I would like to focus on a more fundamental component of Fortgang’s argument: the assumption that family history has any bearing on the matter of having privilege right now. I argue that Fortgang utterly misses the point of privilege, and instead that his argument explains in a very basic way that he is indeed privileged.

Fortgang thinks that having family members who struggled disqualifies him from being classified as privileged. However, this is the reality: Tal Fortgang is white. Tal Fortgang is well-off. Tal Fortgang is male. These are the only factors to consider when asking “Is Tal Fortgang a well-off white male?” Statements like “Tal Fortgang’s grandfather did not have much money, so he had to find a way to make some” can be interesting, inspiring, and instructive, but they have nothing to do with the conversation at hand. No amount of historical analysis can change the way the present turned out. In the present moment, Tal Fortgang is a white male with the means to go to one of the most prestigious schools in the world. He has been given opportunities that most people in the world do not have access to. Thus he is privileged. End of story. 

We are all the descendants of people who struggled through hardship. Hardship is a fact of life. Fortgang’s ancestors were no different. They faced hardship, persevered, and came out on top. Being privileged means, by definition, that your ancestors struggled and then came out on top. Fortgang was born white, male, and wealthy into a world that happened to be organized in favor of people who fit that description. That does not mean he is a bad person, or that he is lazy, or that he should feel responsible for the world’s injustices. It only means that he is privileged.

Fortgang’s idea that the hard work of his family negates centuries of racial conditioning is as silly as Jan and Mary’s belief that they can be so polite to Bigger that this made up conception of race will disappear in a puff of kindness. Jan, Mary, and Tal Fortgang all see race for what it is: an arbitrary, hand-me-down means of classification that is not fair to anyone. Jan and Mary see race as a construction, so they treat Bigger as if it does not exist. Bigger does not have this privilege. To him, it is obvious that race exists. It limits him everywhere he goes. He does not know how to act without it, and he becomes so uncomfortable with her forced attempt at racial blindness that he kills Mary and feels justified in his actions all the way through the end of the novel.

You cannot just ignore the parts of the world you do not agree with. You have to deal with the world in which you live. This world gives an advantage to people who are male and white and wealthy, such as Tal Fortgang. Only the privileged have the luxury of pretending it works otherwise. 

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"Re: Widow of Emmett Till Killer Dies Quietly by Meghan" Comment 6 by Andrew Edstrom

Thanks to Meghan for sharing this story. This article is a great reminder of how recently the events we have discussed in this class took place. To think the wife of one of Emmett Till’s murderers was still alive when our class first met is truly amazing. Especially considering she may have been the subject of one of the Gwendolyn Brookes poems we read: “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi. Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon.” Her silence confirms Brooke’s narrative. Her husband’s “red mouth” did “close over hers.” She never felt free to speak up. 

I agree with Frannie’s point that it is unsurprising that few noted her passing. The fact that Till’s murderers got away with what they did is one of the most embarrassing blunders of our legal system. It is not a fun subject to discuss, and most of us would probably rather let her pass in silence and direct our focus to a less appalling and shameful topic.

When my middle school history class covered the Emmett Till murder, the teacher flat out lied to us. She told us that even though the murderers were not jailed originally, after the magazine confession the case was reopened by a federal court. The way she told it, the first trial was held by a state court, so the federal courts were still able to try the men. I assume that is not how the legal system works, since the killers roamed free for the rest of their lives. Reality had no bearing on this narrative. My whole life, I wrongly believed these men had been tried and convicted and they never saw the light of day again. This blatant cover up is a microscopic view of the larger, macro problem at hand.

It is hard for us to face the realities of racism in American history. It is not a flattering picture of our roots, or humanity as a whole. Humans are weak and embarrassed and self-serving. If I had the power to reprogram our most basic tendencies, we would be wired to talk about this article in an honest and meaningful way. National news would have used this woman’s death as a springboard and played host to powerful discussions of race in our country. But I do not have that power. The widow of Emmett Till’s killer died quietly, and nothing really changed.

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"Re: Allusions to Africa in Langston Hughes and The Crisis by Meghan Connors” Comment 5 by Andrew Edstrom

I would like to thank Meghan for helping reveal the complex relationship that African-Americans living in the 1920’s had with Africa. Feeling drawn to, yet disconnected from an ancestral land is an unfamiliar feeling to me, and this post made me start wondering why that is. The most obvious answer is America is tailor-made for privileged whites like me, so I have never had the need to identify with a distant homeland. I am welcome here. America is home.

For African-Americans in this historical moment (and still today, though to a lesser extent), it was not so clear-cut. On one hand, they were Americans to the very core. After all, they were born in America to parents who grew up in America. The entirety of their experience took place within the cultural context of America. On the other hand, there was a clear and ever-present sense of not being welcome in their own home. They were systematically repressed and confined to their own neighborhoods, bathrooms, restaurants, and schools. Max touches on this conflict nicely in Native Son, saying blacks were “a separate nation, stunted, stripped, and held captive within this nation, devoid of political, social, economic, and property rights” (397). This complex feeling of national homelessness made African-Americans long for a home country that would welcome them with open arms. Africa simultaneously held the magnetic draw of home, and the mysterious repulsion of a land that was completely foreign.

This internal conflict is heartbreaking. I cannot pretend to truly understand the depths of that feeling. However, I have had the experience of being a stepchild in a house where you are not welcome. When I was in 7th grade my father remarried, and my perception was that I was no longer part of the family. I was not invited on outings, or vacations. Eventually, the family moved to an apartment that was too small for me to live in and he rented a second apartment for me to live in by myself. I was not disciplined. I was simultaneously included in and separate from the family. I imagine the conflict of African-Americans in the same way. Unwelcome in their own home, like Cinderella in the hands of her wicked step-mother.  

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"Re: White Children and Their Colored Schoolmates by Frannie Gilligan” Comment 4 by Andrew Edstrom

It is shocking to imagine that children who are so young were already expressing such racist beliefs. However, I draw issue with a few of Frannie’s interpretations of this story. I am not writing this to be aggressive or hurtful. I am writing it because I believe it is important not to jump to conclusions and assume we have found absolute truth as soon as we see the word “study.” This is a societal problem that causes a lot of people to be misinformed.

First off, this is not a study. It is an anecdote about a single classroom exercise done once. One teacher passed out slips of paper to sixty-three of his students and asked them to write what they thought about black people. There was no attempt made at rigor or consistency of methods or finding a representative sample. 

Secondly, it does not prove that children’s opinions mirror those of their parents. For it to do that, the researchers would have needed to ask the children’s parents to write down their opinions of black people. The parents’ opinions could then be compared to those of the children to see if there was a match. Since the parents’ opinions are unknown, we cannot draw any conclusions about the origins of these children’s racist views. Nebulous terms like “socialization” are as close as we can get. It is hard—neigh impossible—to track and measure belief systems in any meaningful way.

Frannie has shared an interesting story about the sad reality that children can learn to discriminate against entire groups of people at a very young age. But this story is not enough to draw any conclusions into the impossibly complicated mechanisms at play here.

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“Re: Transference of Confinement in Native Son” Comment 3 by Andrew Edstrom

Megan’s post fits perfectly with this class’ focus on black bodies in physical space, and helps explain why Bigger feels empowered and free as a result of his murders. I would like to complicate the argument slightly with a counterexample in which it appears that Bigger feels free, yet revels in his own imagined confinement.

When Bigger sleeps with Bessie for the first time in Native Son, there is an explosion of imagined spaces, which I have discussed elsewhere. However, in the aftermath there is a final moment in which his imagined spaces mirror Bessie’s confinement in the airshaft. “He took his hand away and relaxed. He did not feel that he wanted to step forth and resume where he had left off living; not just yet. He was lying at the bottom of a deep dark pit upon a pallet of warm wet straw and at the top of the pit he could see the cold blue of the distant sky” (135). At first glance, this seems to contradict the idea that Bigger frees himself by transferring confinement to others. Instead, at a moment where he is his most relaxed, he imagines himself at the bottom of a pit similar to the one he will later throw Bessie down. Is Bigger transferring his confinement to himself?

No. At this moment, Bigger feels relaxed, but not free. He is the midst of his flight from the law. He has just murdered a white woman. Deep down, he must know he is doomed. Sleeping with Bessie provides him with a moment of relaxation, but it only serves to ease his tension slightly. He is still at the bottom of the pit, but he is briefly resting on the “warm wet straw.” In this moment, Bigger is still confined, and he only is able to take himself out of this confinement by killing Bessie and throwing her down the air shaft—by transferring the confinement to her.

This is yet another piece of evidence supporting Megan’s argument that Bigger frees himself through the transference of confinement. Wright’s choice to describe his confinement as a deep dark pit similar to the one he later sends Bessie down only amplifies the strength of Megan’s point.

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"Re: Media Failure in Race Reporting by Matt Kulju” Comment 2 by Andrew Edstrom

I found Matt’s post very helpful with understanding our class material. It is fascinating to think that reporters only mention the race of African-Americans in the case of a crime, and that race is never mentioned when describing incredible feats of African-Americans. Framed in this light, “The Horizon” makes a lot more sense. The difficulty of finding positive race reporting made it extremely important for the black leadership to tell black success stories and deliberately present them in terms of race to counteract negative stereotypes. Matt’s post can also help us better understand the news snippets in Native Son.

In each article, Bigger is referred to as “the Negro” rather than his actual name. When he is on the run, they write, “Indignation rose to white heat last night as the news of the Negro’s rape and murder of the missing heiress spread through the city” (243). After he is caught, they really lay it on, referring to Bigger as a “Negro sex-slayer,” a “black slayer” who “looks exactly like an ape,” an “exceedingly black...jungle beast,” and a “brutish Negro...out of place in a white man’s civilization” (279-281), among many others. This can only be read as a deliberate effort on the part of the reporters to tie the crime of an individual to the collective identity of the black race, perpetuating stereotypes of black rapists and tarnishing the reputation of an entire people. The reporters’ focus on the specific shade of Bigger’s skin is extremely revealing. As Matt stated, the reporters try to frame blacks as a “menace” unfit for “white civilization,” as if such a thing even existed.

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“Re: Imagined Murder by Jason Burke” Comment 1 by Andrew Edstrom

Jason’s post highlighted a number of instances in which Bigger imagines committing acts of violence, but restrains himself. As Jason pointed out, Bigger uses these imagined killings to justify real acts of violence later. Because he has imagined killing so many times before, Mary’s murder seems a “natural” crime. The tension between implicit societal expectations that he should peaceable and his internal violent fantasies is reconciled by his first real murder. As he testifies to Max, “I killed ‘em ‘cause I was scared and mad. But I been scared and mad all my life and after I killed that first woman, I wasn’t scared no more for a little while” (354). By finally acting on his fantasies, Bigger begins a twisted process of self-actualization. I draw issue with Jason’s claim that Wright faults cinema for planting these violent ideas in his head, and instead argue that Bigger imagines violence because there is literally nothing else he feels free to imagine as a black man.

In the scene in which Max attempts to uncover Bigger’s motives, he asks if Bigger has ever hoped for something, to which Bigger responds, “What for? I couldn’t get it. I’m black” (354). Max tries to unearth other desires, but Bigger keeps coming back to the central problem: His skin color prohibits him from moving up in the world. He is afraid of “everything” and he is mad about it, but there is no outlet for him to properly express this frustration. There is no higher goal towards which he feels he may channel his energies. Instead he is hopelessly trapped. Oftentimes, it gets so bad that he feels there is nothing appropriate for him to do with his body, as we see in the job interview scene and the evening with Jan and Mary. Bigger imagines acts of violence as a reaction to racial oppression so stifling that it makes him physically claustrophobic. It has nothing to do with going to the movies.

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Sass and its subversive potential in DuBois and Hughes By Andrew Harry

 The Crisis Volume 26 No. 2 from June 1923 features a story from W.E.B DuBois called “On Being Crazy.” The short story depicts colloquial exchanges in public spaces between the narrator and white southern individuals. These exchanges address social equality, yet misunderstanding between the narrator and the white individuals provides a satirical sense of humor to the piece. DuBois’ humor amplifies the message of social inequality. As he moves from one public space to another, he is repeatedly denied access to these spaces. The historical context of the piece illuminates DuBois’ growing frustration and desire to use different techniques to elicit a response from his readership. In an interview from 1920, he says that “the cure wasn’t simply telling people the truth, it was inducing them to act on the truth.” 1921 saw the re-release of A Birth of A Nation, a film which the NAACP unsuccessfully tried to ban for its racist depictions of African American men and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. DuBois’ short story uses satire to highlight how the irony of satire is lost on the white audience. Similarly, Langston Hughes’ poem “Ku Klux” uses tongue-in-cheek satire to succinctly portray the dominant ideology and violence of “the great white race” and to represent a subversive challenge to this ideology. Thus, both “Ku Klux” and “On Being Crazy” subvert the dominant ideology through satire. Hughes’ character encounters physical violence, while DuBois’ character experiences verbal oppression, yet the character’s wit amidst this oppression is more ambiguous.

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Post Soap: Rinse, Lather, Repeat History

By: Andrew Harry

2/26

Soap combines the domestic and the economic realm. One of the first commodified household items, soap slipped into homes during the 19th century. What does soap accomplish? It erases dirt and cleans the body. So too, in Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith does soap literally cleanse the body. Yet, soap acts metaphorically as a counterbalance to dirt, as a means for wiping away history, and as a representation of a socioeconomic system with the goal of erasing history while simultaneously exploiting and marginalizing the same groups marginalized during the Antebellum South. Thus, soap represents the reappropriation of a marginalizing cultural commodity for Maxwell. Smith uses soap as a method for individuals to try and forget history while reappropriating that same history.

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Andrew Harry

Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream often uses natural imagery to convey a sense of place. Similarly, Jean Toomer’s Cane locates the reader in the South through the use of natural imagery and darkness. The poem “Georgia Dusk” and the short story “Carma” both use natural imagery to...

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Dehumanizing Black Male Bodies by Ellie Welch

Lillian Smith’s character Henry in Strange Fruit and Richard Wright’s character Bigger Thomas in Native Son are painted as grotesque representations of black male stereotypes. The similarities that the authors create between Henry and Bigger, including the stereotypical nature of their physical appearance and the hostile environment that surrounds them, force them to be seen as a threat to the white communities. Both authors illustrate how the white characters dehumanize the men through humiliation and caricatured description as a way to reduce the perceived threat of the men to their white communities.

In Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith places her focal black, male character, Henry, in dehumanizing process, which temporarily and superficially decreases the perceived threat he poses to the white community. In the scene where Henry is being hunted for the murder of Tracy Dean, the process of dressing Henry in women’s clothing and putting white makeup on his face to camouflage him until he can be ‘safely’ hidden in jail is particularly grotesque because he is humiliated as his appearance becomes distorted. Even if Henry is not aware of his humiliation, Laura Dean recognizes how the process dehumanizes him, “And with the shade drawn and the door locked they had dressed him in her mother’s gingham housedress… and had made him powder his tear-smeared face until it was white... All the feeling she had had was when she saw Henry’s miserable reddened eyes peering out of all that white powder. And suddenly she had not known whether her body would surrender to sobs or wild laughter, though it did neither” (Smith 324). Laura’s conflicted emotions concisely explain Henry’s humiliation and how he is no longer a threat, but he is something that can either be mocked or pitied by whites. Henry’s superficial donning of a white, female identity, is particularly striking because it is the opposite of his identity as a black male. But Henry’s humiliation is temporary. Under the makeup and dress he is still a black male and he is still a threat. Because the white public cannot quash Henry’s blackness he remains a threat and therefore must be eliminated.

Similarly, Richard Wright uses the reporter’s depictions of Bigger after the inquest to illustrate how Bigger is a threat to the white community but can be conquered because of his primal nature. The reporter exaggerates Bigger’s physical characteristics, calling him “exceedingly black,” and stating, “his lower jaw protrudes, reminding one of a jungle beast” (Wright 280). The reporter goes on to describe Bigger in primal and animalistic terms, “he seems a beast utterly untouched by the softening influences of modern civilization. In speech and manner he lacks the charm of the average, harmless, genial, grinning southern darky so loved by the American people” (Wright 280). Wright’s use of these reports demonstrates the exaggerated threat felt by the white community toward black men. However, the threat of Bigger is null because he is seen as less than human. He is even seen as more closely resembling a wild animal than a human; and animals can be tamed, captured and killed by humans. Bigger ceases to be a threat because he can be conquered and eliminated from the white community. Wright deliberately writes Bigger’s crime as a sensational story because it makes the hunting of Bigger into sport for the upper and middle classes of urban whites. Through this analogy of viewing Bigger as a wild, rogue animal, his death is not only justified, it is also celebrated.

Lillian Smith and Richard Wright convey that very presence of black male bodies is a threat to the power of the white community. But, through the process of dehumanization and humiliation whites create space between their communities and the black male. The black male becomes something that can be dealt with. Smith and Wright illustrate the process of eliminating the threat of the black male; the first step is dehumanization, which justifies the second step—killing.

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Value Placed on White and Black Lives in "Native Son" By Richard Wright. By Christiane Buethe

Of course his reactions and feelings stem from the views of the community Bigger grew up in, but more importantly, Richard Wright is pointing out how Bigger places less value on the lives of the black people he knows than the lives of white people he has only just met. This relates directly to the value that Bigger places on his own life, and explains why he lives his life in the violent and careless way he does. Bigger’s reactions comment on how the black community feels about the value their own lives hold, and how these feelings negatively effect both white and black populations.

“His fingers trembled so that he had difficulty in unlocking the door; but they were not trembling from fear. It was a kind of eagerness he felt, a confidence, a fullness, a freedom; his whole life was caught up in a supreme and meaningful act”(pg. 90). As this quote shows, Bigger’s feelings about the murder of Mary were not remorseful, however he knew those around him would take it extremely seriously and that action would be taken immediately to bring justice to the murderer. Because he knew how much weight Mary’s life held in this particular community of Chicago in the 1930’s, Bigger placed a significant amount of weight on the crime he had committed, and he reacted accordingly. Everything changed for Bigger after his night at the Dalton’s, he felt that his entire life held meaning for the first time, not because he had killed for the first time, but because he had killed a white person for the first time. “Gus G.H. and Jack seem far away to Bigger now, in another life, all because he had been in Dalton’s home for a few hours and had killed a white girl. He looked round the room, seeing it for the first time” (pg. 104). Bigger’s whole life had seemed to him a meaningless series of events until he directly affected something so important as a white girls life.

While Book One of “Native Son” led up to the murder of Mary, Book Two shows Bigger taking a number of steps to protect himself from the consequences. He disposes of the evidence, he lies to his family about his whereabouts the night before, he goes back to the Dalton’s house to make sure the body has been completely disposed of, he takes the trunk to the train station, he runs away, and he kills his girl friend Bessie. He runs through these actions as necessary steps in order to remain a free man, and he doesn’t give a second thought to any of them, not even the murder of a second young woman whom he previously claimed to be in love with. As a young black woman, Bessie is not given the same amount of respect, and her life is not given the same amount of value as Mary’s is by the community they live in. We are shown this opposing placement of value by Bigger’s lack of fear after he murders Bessie.  Because of the small amount of weight Bigger has seen be placed on African American lives through out his life, he places the same small amount of value on his own girl friends life because she is black. While the image of Mary’s body had haunted him after he killed her, the thought that lingered in his mind after hilling Bessie was “That was a dumb thing to do. Throwing her away with all that money in her pocket” (pg. 239).

The fact that Bigger takes the murder of Mary infinitely more seriously than the murder of Bessie reflects that he associates much less value to his, his families, and his entire black communities lives than the lives of whites around him. Richard Wright shows that because of this lack of meaning in and value on his life, Bigger causes harm to both the black and white communities he interacts with.

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The Five Biggers by Kiernan McCoy

In "How Bigger Was Born" Wright describes the 5 types of "Bigger" he grew up with and how they influenced the Bigger he eventually wrote. The first Bigger is merely a bully. He took things from other people and fed on praise. This Bigger is represented in the pool hall scene with Gus. Bigger wants to feel like he is in control and he doesn't care if he has to hurt his supposed friend to do it. "His life was a continuous challenge to others" and Wright grants him a violent ending similar to the Bigger of the story. The second Bigger rebelled against white authority and chose to live free of oppression by causing whites trouble. This Bigger is represented in the one who doesn't want the job from the Dalton's even though it would be a great opportunity for his family. He is ultimately selfish and both Wright's imagined character and actual one end up in jail due to this. The third Bigger further rebels against whites, but chooses to live dangerously and pays the price for it. This Bigger is represented in the writing of the ransom note. He refuses to get caught and called a criminal by white people, and his lack of planning is what gets him caught. The fourth Bigger doesn't rebel against white laws, but white taboos, which Wright implies is the most crazy of all. We see this Bigger when he justifies his murders, saying they must have been good. Murder is never a good choice or the only choice, but Bigger's refusal to be just another scapegoat leads even his lawyer Max to question his sanity and leaves Bigger with "eyes full of terror". The fifth Bigger scared white people with his presence and this is scene in Bigger's physical manifestation. He is a huge person with big hands, eyes and muscles, but although his body is deliberate, Wright chooses to focus on his mental turmoil. His body reacts to the impulses of his mind and this is why Bigger is not a brutish sociopath, but a conflicted and emotional being. When Wright summarizes his critics from the black audience, they ask for a more forgiving portrayal. Wright is the representation of a strong black character here, with all the right morals and values. He writes this difficult novel in a way that normal people can read, not only scholarly people. He writes deliberately and fully explains his actions with this elaborate piece. His examination of the role of black people in society is a fruitful and revealing one and by creating Bigger he does not marginalize all black people to being like him, but gives us the context, based in reality, to show the reader what molded Bigger into the man he became to be. 

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POST:

Andrew Harry

Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream often uses natural imagery to convey a sense of place. Similarly, Jean Toomer’s Cane locates the reader in the South through the use of natural imagery and darkness. The poem “Georgia Dusk” and the short story “Carma” both use natural imagery to...