Citation: Yomi OKUNOWO, Ph.D & Biodun AKINTAYO, Ph.D (2024). Not What Bigger Is But What Made Bigger: Richard Wright’s Thesis in Native Son. Yobe Journal of Language, Literature and Culture (YOJOLLAC), Vol. 12, Number 1. Department of African Languages and Linguistics, Yobe State University, Damaturu, Nigeria. ISSN 2449-0660
NOT WHAT BIGGER IS BUT WHAT MADE BIGGER: RICHARD
WRIGHT’S THESIS IN NATIVE SON
By
Yomi OKUNOWO, Ph.D
Biodun AKINTAYO, Ph.D
Abstract
A major
question one can ask in general term is: what is Richard Wright’s project in Native Son? The basis of this question
is borrowed from Wright, concluding that the Negro writer seeks to function
within his race as a purposeful agent in order to depict Negro life in all of
its manifold intricate relationships with a deep informed and complex consciousness
drawn upon the fluid lore of his people.
In trying to articulate a response to this question, one is also
reminded of Wright’s response to a critic, saying that his project is not what
Bigger is but what made Bigger. Our articulation of the
question will simultaneously examine the purpose that Wright’s project in the
novel is supposed to serve. Relying on the phenomenon of race in American
historicism, which continues to define its socio-cultural political life, we
will use this question as a platform on which to argue what can be described as
Wright’s proletariat-like thesis in Native
Son. From this perspective therefore, we will take Bigger Thomas, the
central character both as a metaphor, construing American race historicism and
a parable with which to explicate the reality and outcome of the “Negro
condition” in American society. In all, Wright’s Native Son rhetorically presents a reality of tension constructed
by race- White-Black relationship, including challenges of American society of
nations and the possessive instinct of ‘ownership syndrome’ that runs in
American blood.
Keywords: Native
Son, Bigger, Proletariat-like thesis, Negro condition, Richard Wright.
Theoretical Framework
Essentially,
we locate the interpretive discourse of this paper in American New Historicism
(NH). Its core principle is construing cultural idiosyncrasies and literary
creation within the milieu of socio-cultural, historical and political events
obtainable within a period of time. Centrally, NH as a literary theory focuses
on how the literary object of literature is guided and shaped by the
socio-cultural, economic and political occurrences; see for examples the
illustrative works of these shapers of NH in recent history (Greenblatt and
Gallagher, 2000; Greenblatt, 2011; Montrose, 1996). America as a country is a society of nations,
races, histories, colours and nationalities. This is the perspective of
American historicism on which aspects of her literary canon has become a
construct, daily characterizing the socio-cultural, political life of her
inhabitants. The indices of “freedom and
liberty” where “All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with
certain unalienable rights” enshrined in her constitution is a paradox that
forms the basis of tension, violence and hate in American society, creating a
tributary that branches into virtually all facets of American society.
Thus,
American complex historicism presents the platform on which one can theorize
and engage in the interpretive discourse that shape her cultures and literary
canon that carry issues of race and its catastrophic consequences, which
continue to make global headlines. Therefore, Wright’s Bigger Thomas, in our
estimation, represents and encompasses all the frames of race in America and it
debilitating consequences.
Introduction
Bigger
commits the most bestial crime. Bigger must die and be buried, he does not
deserve praise but condemnation. However, in all, we note that Bigger is an
American and a Negro, he carries the burden of What Du Bois (1903) calls
“double-consciousness”- the complexity of feeling feels his “two-ness,- an
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two
waring ideals in one dark body…(243)
The African American will necessarily have to define his identity and
condition on the Du Bois’s thesis of this “double consciousness”, a situation,
to paraphrase Rawls (2000), which constructs the African American’s identity
from the rabidly racist whims and caprices of others and fear-entrapped ‘Self’.
At any rate, Wright’s “double consciousness” will continue to be a recurring
decimal in black-white racial discourse. In following up, we take the position
of treating Arthur Miller’s The Crucible
as being parallel to the tragic and inhumane social dynamics America has
constructed for herself. That social dynamic becomes, in a sense, the crucible
within which Bigger Thomas was formed, and as the saying goes in Yoruba Omo o le jo baba e ki inu bini- a
child’s resemblance to his father, surely, cannot and should not attract our
annoyance. The puritan society, the
setting of Miller’s The Crucible, with its thematic sense of
marginalization and intolerance of a section of the society, is full of
misplaced hysteria which engenders the disintegration of that “fictional”
society that some profited from it notwithstanding, and it is expected in such
a social order. It is within this sense and understanding that we want to
discuss what we call “Bigger Thomas’s crucible”, that is, the socio-economic
and political chemistry, including historical perspective that create the
condition that make Bigger Thomas.
The Thesis of history
We
cannot read Native Son in ignorance
or neglect of its material history, more so, among other things, considering
the personal historical experiences chronicled in Wright’s (1940) “How “Bigger”
was Born”. To ignore this is to
jeopardize and undermine the interpretation of the novel and understanding of
the present. By the token of history books, we know that slavery, between 1640
and 1865, was a legally sanctioned industry in America, even though slavery
dates back to 1619. America declared her independence from imperial Britain in
1776, and the foundation of that declaration is freedom and liberty both for
the geographical entity and the people inhabiting it. Freedom and Liberty
become the foundation and the defining elements of the American constitution,
where “All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain
unalienable rights- among these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. It
is ironic to observe that between 1776 and 1861, slavery flourished in America,
only to be mitigated by a civil war lasting five years that is between 1861 and
1865. In any case, as Colombo et al (2007) observe, the extolled “Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” in that declaration did not apply to all
Americans. Colombo says further:
Indeed,
the Constitution itself didn’t ban the practice of slavery until the Fourteenth
Amendment was adopted at the end of Civil War, and another century would pass
before equal treatment under the law was extended to African Americans during
the civil rights movement of the 1960s. (759).
That
civil war put paid to slavery and ended it, but it projected itself into a more
vengeful racism, creating a segregated society of blacks and whites, with
segregated living zones “black belt” and ‘white belt’, and in the twenty-first
century; whites neighborhood and blacks neighborhood. This racial divide shut
out the black population from America’s socio-economic political discourse and
makes a mockery of America’s claim to equality, freedom and liberty. The
differences between the attitude of the North and South of America to slavery
at that time was more of a changing
economic fortune than to the abhorrence in human trade, particularly as being
claimed in the North. As noted elsewhere, the increasing manufacturing and
industrial activities make slave merchandizing unattractive in the North, while
the agrarian rural life imperative of tobacco planting and other agricultural
produce made concentration of slavery inevitable in the South. Thus the
difference between the abolitionist North and the slave-holding South was only
a shift in economic paradigm; the South provided the raw materials produced
with slave labour used in the manufacturing industries of the North and,
therefore, the North was a direct beneficiary of slavery activities of the
South. In addition, trade in fugitive slaves was booming in the North; a
situation where escaped slaves from the South to the North were being
recaptured and sent back to the South at negotiated prices.
In
time, this social equation developed into hatred and dangerous animosity, an
animosity between the oppressed and the oppressors which at recorded moments in
history found attestation in violence and deadly confrontations. The grid of
these confrontations has always been denial of opportunities, injustice, lack
of equity, equality etc. These are the crucible of evils into which Bigger
Thomas finds himself entangled. He becomes evil in the process. Thus, his
statement “They wouldn’t let me live and I killed” (428) is an apt metaphor of
denial and the aftermath of bestial violence. Bigger’s struggle is a struggle
against racial hierarchy of white supremacy; his violence seeks to break the
iron wall of traditionally held privilege position of whites. Violence
therefore becomes Bigger’s game and job. The attempt to disentangle himself is
his inner struggle and the fuel that propel him into crimes and ultimately
murder and the capital punishment of the electric chair. There is a sense in
which this empathy of denial, in a deliberate self-simulation, can be used to
understand the black folks conditions. This sense of history becomes an
instrument and the basis of the defense employed by Max: “Your Honor, I must
still speak in general terms, for the background of this boy must be shown”,
and he goes on into history:
Our
forefathers came to these shores and faced a harsh and wild country. They came
here with a stifled dream in their hearts, from lands where their personalities
had been denied, as we hav denied the personality of this boy. They came from
cities of the old world where the means to sustain life were hard to get or own. They were colonists and
they were faced with a difficult choice: they had either to subdue this wild
land or be subdued by it… But in conquering they used others…Lives to
them were tools and weapons to be
wielded against hostile land and climate.(388-9).
The use
of human beings as tools is a reference to slavery, and so American forefathers
shut their eyes to the humanity of black slaves to build the nation called
America. And according to Max, the equation is ‘man eats man’: “Men once
oppressed our forefathers to the extent that they viewed other men as material
out of which to build a nation; we in turn have oppressed others to such a
degree that they, fumblingly as yet, try to construct meaningful lives out of
us! Cannibalism still lives!” (398). Let us take inspiration, again, from
Hughes’s poem “Freedom’s Plow” (1962):
A long
time ago, but not too long ago, Ships came from across the sea Bringing the
Pilgrims and prayer-makers, Adventurers and booty seekers, Free men and
indentured servants, Slave men and slave masters, all new- To a new world,
America! (313-314)
To
Hughes, and of course from the logic of history and slavery, “Thus together
through labor,/All these hands made America”, that is “Out of labor-white hands
and black hands”. However, that collective labour, the nation having been
built, is now being denied. Thus, “Now it is Me here, and You there./Now it’s
Manhattan, Chicago,/Seattle, New Orleans…”, and according to Bigger “We live
here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we
ain’t” (20). Consequently, “Every white
man considers it his duty to make a black man keeps his distance. He doesn’t
know why most of the time, but he acts that way. It’s the way things are…”
(346). By this, the racial line, and literally, the battle line is drawn, and
American forefathers said “But we have told them: ‘This is a white man’s
country!’ ” (393). History sows the seed of “hate”, intolerance and racial
hysteria among the ethnic groups, particularly, the black and white population
of America. This evil that grew out of history, according to Amis (1974), has
cast all “niggers” as worthless, dishonest, irrational and inherently violent.
This thesis, tragically, finds conviction in both the white community and the
Negro himself. The experience of being the object of suspicion and distrust is
permanently imprinted on the consciousness of the Negro. This social phenomenon
is well rooted into the socio-economic and political fabric of American
society. It will, therefore, be a miracle for the Bigger Thomases of this world
to escape from it. It is a social situation that is passed consciously or
unconsciously from generation to generation of American society. When under
cross-examination over his estate renting tactics, Mr. Dalton says, “Well, it’s
an old custom” (327). When asked if the custom is right, he says “I didn’t make
the custom” (327). Whatever the blacks or whites have become are consequences
of evils perpetrated in the course of history. It is this understanding that
informs Max’s statement in his argument when he says:
Your
Honor, the most pathetic aspect of this case is that a young white woman, a
student at a university, ignorant and thoughtless, though educated, tried to
undo as an individual a gigantic wrong accomplished by a nation through three
hundred long years, and was misunderstood and is now dead because of that
misunderstanding. …She was acting toward him in such a way as no white face
usually acts toward a Negro, and as a white face acts only when it is about to
fleece a negro of something. He did not understand her. She confounded him. Her
actions made him feel that the entire universe was tumbling about his
head.(396)
Furthermore, the façade of segregation and thousand years of
suppression, which effectively shut out the black folks from the main stream of
American socio-economic civilization, has produced a separate nation; the
whites “Self” and the blacks “Other”, an ontological binarism that is
colour-based. Blacks, Max contends, “Taken collectively, they are not simply
twelve million people; in reality they constitute a separate nation, stunted,
stripped, and held captive within this nation, devoid of political, social,
economic, and property rights” (397). Separatism breeds isolationism and by
implication subjective sets of principles with which the individuals or groups
regard and relate to one another do too. This submission is understood by
Mary’s confessional observation:
You
know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into these houses…and see how your
people live. You know what I mean? I have been to England, France and Mexico,
but I don’t know how people live ten blocks from me. We know so little
about each other. I just want to see. I want to know these people.
(69-70).
For
thousand years this social dynamic is allowed to fetter as a component of
American civilization and sips into the consciousness of the American Bigger
Thomas, making him a real native son of America as constructed by “The hate and
fear which we have inspired in him, woven by our civilization into the very
structure of his consciousness, into his blood and bones, into the hourly
functioning of his personality, have become the justification of his existence”
(400). It is in this connection too that Johnson (1940) asserts, “The great
masses of Negroes carry in their hearts the heavy heritage of slavery, and
their present degradation. Such has been their past, it is their present, and,
as far as they can see, it is their future” (92). In a way, therefore, racial
confrontations and the million Bigger Thomases have become social land mines
exploding regularly in the face of racial inequality and lack of space to
realize their ‘American dream’. Max, making reference to the American civil war
of which slavery is one of the causes, metaphorically paints a picture of
apocalypse threatening, but yet to come: “Your Honor, another civil war in
these states is not impossible; and if the misunderstanding of what this boy’s
life means is an indication of how men of wealth and property are misreading
the consciousness of the submerged millions today, one may truly come” (402).
The Thesis of Religion
Richard
Wright’s position on religion is unambiguous: “We Negros have no religion that
teaches us that we are “God’s chosen people;” our sorrows cannot be soothed
with such illusions”. This conclusion is both a satire on America as “God’s Own
Country” and a rejection of religion as a solution to the “sorrows” of the
Negro. Religion is projected as an ambivalent element in Native Son. It is used both as a rhetorical device and a thematic
confrontation. Communism is not an ally of religion, it abhors it. No doubt,
the communist ideal is projected in this novel, and it sees religion as “the
opium of the people” providing cold comfort and unrealistic solutions to
socio-economic and political inequality in the society. The emotional support
which religion seems to be providing weakens and crumbles in the face of real
life tragic drama and this failure becomes the basis of its rejection by Bigger
Thomas. Bigger’s mother’s religious rituals of songs and prayers, together,
become a source of irritation to him; “The song irked him and, he was glad when
she stopped…” (10). Again, Rev. Hammond’s prayer is a reminder of guilt and
condemnation, and of “suffering and hope”. All these are unfathomable to
Bigger, “And he loathed it because it made him feel as condemned and guilty as
the voice of those who hated him” (283). Rev. Hammond’s rendition of Creation
rather than make Bigger’s “heart glad…” (283), it makes him think: “To those who wanted to kill him he was not
human, not included in that picture of Creation; and that was why he had killed
it. To live, he had created a new world for himself, and for that he was to
die” (285). He is not one of the “God’s chosen people”. For Bigger therefore,
“there was nothing in it. Aw, all they did was sing and shout and pray all the
time. And it didn’t get ’em nothing.” (355)
Consequently,
the confrontation between Rev. Hammond and Max with Jan is an epical
confrontation between religion and communism. It is a duel that ends with a
firm and violent rejection of religion and a grotesque portrayal of its
practitioners as having nothing to offer in the face of human tragedy and
immediate needs. Thus, while capitalism may be encouraging the piety of
religion surreptitiously for its own aggrandizement, it is confronted head on
by communism, constantly encouraging Bigger to fight on:
But
there ain’no usa draggin’ no Communism in this thing, Mistah. Ah respecks yo’
feeling’s powerfully, suh; but whut yuh’s astin’ jus’ stirs up mo’ hate. Whut
this po’ boy needs is understandin’. (289)
For Jan
and Max, Bigger “… got to fight…” (289), “This is your life, Bigger. You got to
fight”. (379). Rev. Hammond’s prescription of “understandin” is a foolish
unworkable option in this context.
In a
way, Bigger’s last breakfast with his family is symbolically analogous to
Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. “Bigger sat at the table and waited for
food. Maybe this would be the last time he would eat here. He felt it keenly
and it helped him to have patience.” (105). This event is contextualized with
the bloody murder that Bigger has just committed at the background, and,
therefore, it becomes a mockery of the biblical Christ’s last supper with his
disciples prelude to the salvation of humanity, and as we know Bigger never
experienced salvation but damnation. In another sense, Bigger is a disfigured
and bastardized figure of Christ, in which his gang members (Gus, G.H and Jack)
are his crime disciples. They become ‘fishers of crimes’. Bigger, by his
metaphorical representation, however, fails to purge (or leave that
possibility) or ‘save’ his society of its hysteria; ‘sins’. This is in spite of
what has been made of his humanity and what he has become in American racial
society. Bigger’s death signifies nothing but racial brutality and waste, and
because no lesson is learnt, his resurrection, unlike Christ, becomes
impossible, and by a token of symbolic implication, making that society seems
irredeemable of its racial prejudices. A
corollary of this is the forced acceptance of Bigger to pray, which his mother
sees as the only means of saving him, not from death but his soul- “You got
your soul to save. I won’t be able to rest easy as long as I’m on this earth if
I thought you had gone away from us without asking God for help” (299). “The
wages of sin is death”, says the Scriptures, and Bigger, the mother seems to be
saying, must die because he is a sinner whose only salvation lies in the
acceptance of Christ in the form of prayers. When eventually he agrees to pray
to the happiness of the whole family, a prayer session ensues, which can
symbolically be read to mean a rite of passage, a requiem for Bigger before his
confrontation with the electric chair. To the indignation of communism,
religion seems to be encouraging emotional bigotry and promoting human problems
instead of solving them by suggesting practical realistic solutions.
In a
more tragic turn of events, after Bigger has grudgingly accepted religion, even
though forced down his throat to satisfy his mother with the hope of a final
soul-saving refuge, he is, again, denied that opportunity of eternal salvation
by the savagery of the white community. The flaming cross (336), the symbol of
white savagery, stands in his threshold of redemption, contradicting the
crucifix, as preached to him by Rev. Hammond, as a symbol of meekness, piety,
forgiveness and ultimately, salvation. Wright seems to be saying that the piety
of religion is not capable of appeasing the gods of white racism nor assuaging
its blood-sucking goddesses. Bigger’s
contemplation of the situation is instructive:
He
looked up. Atop a building across the street, above the heads of the people loomed a flaming cross…The cross
the preacher had told him about was bloody, not flaming; meek, not militant. It
had made him feel awe and wonder, not fear and panic. It had made him want to
kneel and cry, but this cross made him want to curse and kill (337-8).
Religion
is, therefore, an entrapment and in a symbolic final show of rejection of
religion simultaneously with denial of redemptive opportunity, Bigger violently
assaulted Rev. Hammond and throws away the cross “the preacher had hung round
his throat”. “He gripped the cross and snatched it from his throat. He threw it
away, cursing a curse that was almost a scream” (338).
The Thesis of Power and Violence
The
enveloping imagery of white dominance in the rhetoric of Native son is so preponderant that it becomes a possible motif for
violence on the part of Bigger, while the threat to that dominance is a motif
for counter violence, making violence to beget violence. Somehow, Wright seems
to be playing a racial game, where, according to McCarthy (1972), “Victim and
victimizer are locked together, the fear and violence of one inevitably
producing the fear and violence of the other” (99). This paradigm is the model
that becomes emblematic and runs the current of violence, in its many forms,
throughout the novel. Slavery, we must add, produces the trajectory of the
nuances of racial discourse in America. Power was not contested dominantly
between whites and blacks- between ‘white’ masters and ‘black’ slaves. However,
the reality of slavery abolition and the granting of “freedom and equality”
seemingly to all created the fear of confrontation that queried unalloyed
socio-economic dominance of the white population. This created the emergence of
violent self-protection strategies on both sides of the population, creating
internecine hatred among races of America.
It is
projected that the dominating white community of Bigger provides the structures
of power with which he defines and ascribes meaning to his impoverished,
living-dead condition. In his consciousness, the white community is the cause
of his cursed life, and he does not always hesitate to put that blame on the
door step of his white enemies. In this regard, there are many “ifs” in
Bigger’s consciousness which are derived from the power position of whites, and
which he desperately desires. Beckley’s campaign poster is symbolically one,
and Bigger wishes he were in Beckley’s shoes; “if I was in his shoes for just
one day I’d never have to worry again”. (13). The plane weaving motion above
him (16) symbolically overpowers him and constructs some kind of power. Bigger
assumes this power, enacting it by “playing whites” (17). It provides a
buffoonery, pitiable and unreal entry into the white world, which he fears to
dare in reality. Bigger’s yearning for power can be seen as legitimate because
it interprets to mean crying for opportunity to get into the ennobling
socio-economic tradition of America. However, his idea of power is stunted and
it seems to be contingent on revenge and violence against white supremacy,
which is the inducer of such a state of mind in the first place, producing the
pathological fear that cages Bigger.
Bigger’s
eloquence of abject poverty and debilitating frustration in the face of white
opulence find no listening ears, except in the Daltons’ lousy ping-pong gift
(355) and their robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul philanthropic gesture of the
capitalist orientation (328) toward the Negro education funds, again, helping
to propagate and sustain white dominance and supremacy to “put blacks in their
place”. Bigger is shackled down in all front and his humanity dangles between
shame and fear. What gnaws Bigger are the shame of his inadequacy defined by
his skin colour and white discourse, shame of not being able to fulfill basic
responsibilities to himself, his family and black community. To rub off this
avalanche of shame and fulfill himself he would need to break into white power
circle but the wall of fear created by whites into his consciousness remains
his obstacle, and needs to be surmounted. That fear spurns dialogue and
engenders full circle violence between white and black folks. Bigger’s genuine
grievances are missed and lost within the mindset that constructs racial
stereotypes, and within the option of violence, shutting down dialogue and
fortifying further the wall of racial segregation.
At no
time does Bigger divest himself of weapons. His armory of gun and knife are
emblematic of his fear and violence, and for him it is the only means to power.
For his tormentors, it is the reason he must be gotten rid of because he
threatens the power base of the white community. Ironically, in spite of his
weaponry bravado, he is a weakling, he is enveloped by ‘white’ fear; he is
incapable of using that resource of violence in attacking that which he fears,
save accidentally, which, itself, is
propelled by fear of sexual taboo constructed by the white community. This is
with the background of a mutual emotional interaction between Bigger and Mary
Dalton which finds reality in a tipsily condition. The white community seems to
be bereft of any humane sympathy toward Bigger and the black community for fear
of inadvertently creating the possibility of an integrative society which would
seek to challenge their power and make them look ordinary or equal to their
erstwhile slaves. To the white community of Bigger, it is an unthinkable
proposal, and so, instead for Bigger’s condition to provoke guilt and shame, it
fuels an attitude of “do or die”.
The Thesis of Justice
The
judicial system as a regulator of society is made a partial arbiter in the
resolution of conflicts in Native Son.
Even in the face of an unambiguous crime that attracts capital punishment,
justice is expected to be seen as free and fair to all. In addition, the law
seeks to promote and uphold equity, freedom and liberty, as it were, without
regard to race, gender, socio-economic and political status and religious
affiliation. It is on the basis of these ideals and idea of the law that one
must measure the reality of the courtroom and the quality of justice meted on
Bigger Thomas. Having been overwhelmed by the angst of Bigger’s crime, the
malice of racism and xenophobia of black threat, the atmosphere of the
courtroom is inflicted with prejudices and biases and it must be said that it
projects Bigger as guilty before he is proved as such. Beyond the preponderance
of racial prejudices which are made glaring, the courtroom is also turned into
a fertile ground where individuals and groups promote and project their
political and ideological interests and thoughts, including race-constructed
hatred to the detriment of the defendant and the spirit of the law, and by
implication burying Bigger before his death.
The
courtroom serves as a campaign ground for politician Buckley who is seeking
reelection into a political office. He constantly appeals to the sentiment of
the prejudiced vengeance-seeking electorate-society symbolized by the mob and
plays to the gallery of their whims and caprices:
Buckley
again looked at the crowd in the court room. “It is not”, Buckley continued,
“that a representative of the people finds the masses of the citizens who
elected him to office standing literally at his back, waiting for him to
enforce the law…” The room was quiet as a tomb. Buckley strode to the window
and with one motion of his hand hoisted it up. The rumbling mutter of the vast
mob swept in “kill ’im now!” “Lynch ’im!” (373)
The
letter of the law is made peripheral to the public emotional demand for the
head of Bigger. That demand symbolically suggests a call for public mob action- the lynching of Bigger
Thomas.(414). Max attempts much to draw the attention of the presiding judge
and the court to this obviously retaliation-seeking mob to no avail: “How can
I, I asked myself, make my voice heard with effect above the hungry yelping of
hounds on the hunt?” (384-5). It is clear that Buckley is exploiting the
situation to make political gains towards his reelection into the office of
State Attorney. He, therefore, throws into the wind all sense of fairness
demanded by law. He coerces and threatens the court by inciting the
race-propelled public sentiments, becoming a “mob-master”. Max is very much
aware of this when he asks “Who, then, fanned this latent hate into fury? Whose
interest is that thoughtless and misguided mob serving?” (386), and he gives
the answer: “The State Attorney knows…” (386). Thus, to Buckley, Bigger’s trial
becomes a utilitarian tool with which he seeks personal political
aggrandizement. Buckley’s torrents of racist abuse by denigrating name calling
(407-413) smacks of personal attack and hatred on Bigger. Tragically therefore, the courtroom and the
process of law are invested with an atmosphere of morbid fear and the draconian
thoughtless hysteria of that society. The mob, urged on by Buckley for his own
political agenda and “a ravenous desire and cannibalistic instinct”, to use
Soyinka’s words “offers us the human equivalent of scrofulous canines whose
hysterical whelps are designed to drown out genuine alarms of imminent danger”
that is capable of annihilating the conscience of a nation on the alter of
racism.
The
fear of communism is the beginning of wisdom for capitalism. This is very rife
in the story, and indeed many critics have interpreted the novel as a piece of
communist propaganda, and as Gibson (1984) suggests, “The interpretation of the
novel as a propaganda piece for the communist party stems from the notion that
Max is Wright’s spokesman”. The communist thesis seems to form part of the
undercurrent project in the novel, it is made explicit as a defense mechanism
in Max’s defense of Bigger Thomas, and this gnaws the prosecuting party as
aptly demonstrated by Buckley’s outburst: “I shall not lower the dignity of
this court, nor the righteousness of the people’s cause, by attempting to
answer the silly, alien, communistic and dangerous idea advanced by the
defense” (407). Consequently, Kinnamon (1984) rightly opines that “The
courtroom arguments of Max in the final section… are patently leftist. He
equates racial and class prejudice, both being based on economic exploitation”,
the communist concept of the time, concurring that “Not all Max’s courtroom
speech reflects so directly communist doctrine, but none of it is inconsistent
with party line on racial matters”. The fervent attempt by Max to save Bigger’s
life is, therefore conjectured, by the
opposing foes within the communist context rather than be seen as an effort to
save a human life as a redemptive process to ask the society to divest itself
of a deep rooted hatred that has eaten deep into its fabric. It is within this
understanding that I see the subversion of the law as having been blatantly
committed. It also follows that while Bigger is on trial; communism is also
inadvertently put on trial, meaning that the condemnation of Bigger’s soul is,
in a way, the condemnation of communism. To have spared Bigger Thomas’s life
would have amounted to a victory for communism against that society’s
abhorrence. To have also allowed this position to factor into the judicial
process would have amounted to a
miscarriage of justice. The whole courtroom spectacle reeks of vendetta
directed at the Negro community and their unsolicited communist allies/friends.
Buckley’s vituperative language and malevolent speech very well fit into the
racial symphony in the court, and this sweetens the bellies of the white community,
becoming the epicentre of the court biases and judgment.
Against
the general critical judgment of Bigger’s voice being ‘collapsed into a cause’
(making him voiceless), We take the position that the absence of Bigger’s voice
is its being conspicuous, and the addition that his voice remains caged in his
“unconscious” under the grip of fear, finding attestation in violence and
absolving him of responsibility. Moreover, this absencing of voice seems to
suggest hopelessness, which demands a sympathetic representation in the face of
an atmosphere of overwhelming fear. At the end, his voice makes a solemn
transition into his ‘consciousness’ during the process of his purgation,
finding attestation in the reality of his condition and acceptance of
responsibility with the possibility of a change, the sanguinary opportunity
which he is never afforded by the fact of being consigned into the electric
chair.
Drawing
a conclusion on the subject of justice, the occasion of Bigger’s trial should
have been used, drawn on to display the pristine of American law and judicial
system. However, it does appear that the quality of justice is predicated and
paraded on race, personal ambition, group interest and political affiliation.
What Wright, therefore, confronts us with is not really the enormity of Bigger
Thomas’s grisly crime but a protest and the danger therein of the racial
dynamics of society that provides the context in which Bigger Thomas was born
and bred. While the novel imposes accountability, it also warns and
indicts the collective conscience
of America. The rather pathetic statement of Max “If I can make the people of
this country understand why this boy acted like he did, I’ll be doing more than
defending him” (292) seems to suggest that Wright would have wished, I think,
that Bigger be seen as a sacrificial figure who should be used to put the
society in a pensive, redemptive and purgatory path. Indeed this is what Max
primarily seeks in court when he says:
I say,
Your honor, that the mere act of understanding Bigger Thomas will be a thawing
out of icebound impulses, a dragging of the sprawling forms of dread out of the night of fear into the
light of reason, an unwilling of the unconscious ritual of death in which we,
like sleep-walkers, have participated so
dreamlike and thoughtlessly. (383)
After
all, as Macdonald (2007) notes, the idea of “right” as a primary meaning of
“freedom” took hold in postwar American culture. The cry for “Freedom now”, the
rhetoric of liberation…” and civil rights movement, we add, “the refusal to be
ignored, the method of passive resistance—African American precedent provided
models and inspiration for other movements in the following decades.” (206).
But, alas! The symbolic models of Jan’s humanity, the self-reconciliation of
Bigger’s real consciousness with the reality of his condition and his society,
and the model of the consequences that racism is capable of engendering are all
lost on the community of America in Native
Son.
Conclusion
The utilitarian value of Native Son is its consequences- murder, injustice, inequality, paradox of American “freedom and justice”. In this regard, Bigger’s self-purgation, realizing his own existence and claiming his true consciousness (“I didn’t want to kill. But what I killed for, I am”) has widely been acknowledged as a piece of masterly literary stroke. However, what is not noted is the realization that its value has no throw back into the society of Bigger, it is lost in the orgy of racism, it remains and goes with Bigger to the electric chair. A similar loss to the society is derived from Bigger’s betrayal of Jan’s sincere friendship and camaraderie. That betrayal is a test of Jan’s humanity. Jan’s offer of forgiveness and legal assistance and Bigger’s positive change of attitude toward him as a white man should have been used by that society as a threshold of dismantling distrust and fear of one another. Again, it is lost on the alter of racism and fear of communism. Bigger’s “moves from determinism to freedom”, to borrow Hakutani’s words, on a path laden with blood is therefore wasted, and the lesson which would have formed the basis of his heroism is also tragically lost on his society. Woefully therefore, Max’s polemic fails to make the death of Mary Dalton mean (393) and what the life of Bigger would have meant if he were saved from the electric chair. In general observation race issue is still an exploding phenomenon in American society. The white folks/black folks American social paradigm and its socio-economic racial equation in Richard Wright’s Native Son places a burden of choices to be made, and to take a cue from Ola Rotimi (1995), that choices have become a “twingle twangle twyning tayle”; the story of a twins brothers- Taiwo and Kehinde whose destiny remains in their hands in the choices they make between peace and war as they go forth into the world.
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