resses and other form of self-expression for him. This is why he desperately wants it known that he did this act all by himself.
There are symbols used in the novel to show us that Wright felt America needed a wake-up call regarding its excessive oppression of blacks. We see on such symbol in the alarm clock that is used to symbolize a wake-up call to a society that refuses to accept its culpability in this excess of oppression that makes Bigger always feel like he is “following a strange path in a strange land” (Wright 127). This is why Bigger’s communist lawyer tells the court that Bigger is incapable of killing because he is already dead since he must live in a society that excessively quashes any affirmation of his true identity. Bigger is displace from his society because its excess of oppression allows him no place, save a subordinate and voiceless one. He is Ralph Ellison’s “invisible man” who is destined to fall because it is the only avenue open to a black man in the midst of such excessive oppression. Thus, the other side of this coin of excessive oppression is that it robs the black individual of their right as a human to fully flower and wholly realize themselves. This is symbolized in the novel by the “You can’t win” printed on the billboard that Bigger must view daily outside his building. We can see how excessive such oppression is in American reality when we consider that one Hollywood producer who wished to produce Wright’s novel requested that he “wanted to change Bigger Thomas to a white man; but Wright refused. Wright himself played Bigger in a motion-picture version of Native Son made in Argentina in 1951” (Biography 4). Wright, unlike Bigger, refused to allow the excessive oppression and racism he encountered to make him react excessively and self-destruct. Instead, like many other black writers of his era, he became an ex-patriot in response to his frustration with America...