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 dilemma in the pages of this book.
The requirement that Bigger get a job and his subsequent arrival at the Dalton's home have the inevitability of tragic premises. Bigger is being led straight to what he fears the most and feels helpless to stop his progress toward it. As it is described in the novel's voice, half narrator and half Bigger, when Bigger is driving with Mary and Jan Erlone, he is suffocating between the two white people until "suddenly he wante...