Character of Bigger Thomas in Native Son

At the end of Richard Wright's Native Son Bigger Thomas, condemned to die, pours out to his lawyer the astonishing words, "What I killed for must have been good!" (392). The true horror of Wright's novel is in those words--in Bigger's anguished discovery of his own existence. Throughout the novel, Bigger has moved as if in a dream. When, almost incoherent with fear, he kills Mary Dalton, he is then described as "feeling as though he was in a weird spell and was now free" (86). The impulsive slaying of Dalton is precipitated by his panic and fear when someone opens the door to her room. "A white blur was standing by the door, silent, ghostlike" (84). In the moments between the appearance of this white blur and his shaking off the spell, Bigger Thomas has committed the unchangeable act that leads to his death and is also the means of his solving his own existential dilemma. Wright's structure, imagery and the creation of a particular blend of omniscient and first person narration all combine in this book to create a portrait of a man who is trapped by this dilemma. Bigger Thomas faces life in a temporizing manner--always fearful, hoping to avoid whatever it is he fears, but unsure how that is to be done. Wright employs images of whiteness and blankness and suffocation as the means of conveying Bigger's overwhelming dread. Viewing this central imagery through several different subjectivist critical approaches gives insights into how Wright realized Bigger's existential

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at them in that light, the quality of symptoms. As Brantlinger notes, "tragedy . . . is regressive in its nature [for] if by 'infantile' we mean 'elemental,' then tragedy takes us closer to our roots, to what we feel is most universal and basic within ourselves" (36). The playing out of Bigger's neurosis after he is forced into contact with whiteness is essentially a search for origins. In the traditional blackness metaphor, Brantlinger says, the theological language regarding God's actions in dividing night and day can easily be translated "into psychological language" and it is not difficult to find in the metaphor "a regressive search for origins" (35). In the reversed metaphor employed by Wright, the search leads the searcher to whiteness. The search for origins and the satisfaction of the drives of infantile sexuality that, being thwarted, produced Bigger's neurosis can only be achieved when he is immersed in the element of whiteness that he fears so much. Wright combines the many aspects of the whiteness symbol at one particular strategic point in the novel and the blankness of whiteness comes across clearly as the element in which Bigger can resolve his thwarted desires. In order to do this, Wright has had to build

Category: Literature - C