Bigger

I don’t know quite what to write about Wright’s “Native Son”. The excerpt we read showed us a young man who was unsure of himself, afraid of the “white world” and the feelings of insecurity it called up. To Bigger, whites were not to be trusted, at least not fully. He did not like Mary and Jan’s attempts to win him over with their Communist talk; he felt that whites who had once put down blacks “held him up now to look at him and be amused”. To be sure, their alcohol-fueled antics did little to convince him of their sincerity. He was angered by their treatment of him. When he had to take a drunken Mary up to her room, he let the closeness and the excitement of forbidden fruit get to his head- he stole a kiss before her mother could come into the room, revealing his mixed emotions. His terror at being caught by the blind woman led to desperate actions, more primitive response than quick thinking. A pillow to smother her sounds accidentally smothered her to death, and Bigger became the stereotype that his employers, and victim, fought so hard to erase.