Native Son

In Native Son, Richard Wright uses characterization and symbolism to underscore his theme of how American institutionalized oppression of blacks creates human tragedy for those oppressed. Yet, the novel is not an attempt to merit our sympathy or empathy for the condition of repressed blacks, it is to illustrate how the nihilistic attitude of blacks like Bigger Thomas is the direct result of white repression of differences in non-white cultures. In other words, Bigger's only option is death because the society which has created him has given him nothing else to care about, nothing he can call his own, no chance to explore any of his potential. Thus, he turns to violence as an expression of identity which is what his reaction to reading the newspaper expresses. When he reads the article in the paper, he exclaims to his mother, "No! Jan didn't help me! He didn't have a damned thing to do with it! I � I did it!" (Wright 283). His act of violence is his only affirmation of self in a society that represses any other form of self-affirmation and he desperately clings to it.

Even the alarm clock that rings in the beginning of the novel is a symbol. It is a symbol Wright uses as a "wake up" call to a society that remains locked in illusions regarding its creation of race relations that makes Bigger always someone who is "following a strange path in a strange land" (Wright 127). This is why Bigger's communist lawyer tells the court that Bigger

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ety. It is for this reason that I say that the specific details of Bigger's life are not as important as the fact that somehow he was destined to fail" (Homegrown 1). We see an illustration of this dilemma when Bigger kills the young white girl. He accidentally kills her, but he tries to silence her because he knows no one will believe the story of a black man, particularly when it comes to the stereotypical notion perpetrated by whites that all black men love to rape and kill white women. As such, Bigger is alone, which is why not even his lawyer whom he tries to explain his emotions to (a final plea to assert his identity) understands, "Max did not even know!" (Wright 49). Other than violence and self-destruction, the only path Bigger sees available to him is the path of other blacks around him who he feels blind themselves to the harsh conditions imposed upon them by whites. He cannot understand his mother's ability to fall back on religious believes because he sees it as a blinding illusion she keeps up in order to fit into a society where seeing would drive a person insane. Bigger thinks people who succumb to such illusions do so only because they cannot take the harsh illumination or glare of the painful light of rac

Category: Literature - N