The Necessity of Violence in Native Son by Richard Wright Essay

In Native Son, Richard Wright uses depicting and symbolism to underscore his theme of how American institutionalized oppression of blacks creates kind-hearted tragedy for those oppressed. Yet, the novel is not an attempt to merit our sympathy or empathy for the condition of repressed blacks, it is to illustrate how the nihilistic attitude of blacks like bigger Thomas is the direct result of white repression of differences in non-white cultures. In new(prenominal) words, Biggers only option is death because the society which has created him has given him nothing else to business concern about, nothing he can call his own, no chance to seek any of his potential. Thus, he turns to violence as an expression of identity which is what his reply to reading the newspaper expresses. When he reads the article in the paper, he exclaims to his mother, No Jan didnt help me He didnt have a damned thing to do with it I - I did it (Wright 283). His act of violence is his only affirm ation of self-importance in a society that represses any other form of self-affirmation and he desperately clings to it. Even the alarm clock that rings in the commencement exercise of the novel is a symbol. It is a symbol Wright uses as a charge up up call to a society that remains locked in illusions regarding its understructure of race relations that makes Bigger always someone who is following a strange path in a strange land (Wright 127). This is why Biggers communist lawyer tells the court that Bigger is incapable of killing because he is already dead as he is forced to exist in a society that refuses him any affirmation of life. Bigger is a displaced mortal because the society into which he is born allows him no place. He is Ellisons invisible populace who is destined to fall be... ... of modern American societys institutionalized oppression. WORKS CITED Richard Wright. Chapman, R. (ed.) fatal Voices. vernal York, Penguin Books, 1968 113-114. Richard Wr ight Biography. http//www.math.buffalo.edu/sww/wright/wright_bio.html March 20, 1999 1-5. Richard Wright Homegrown Bigger Thomas as a Product of His Environment. http//www.loras.edu/ENG/faculty/fretz/Page12.html March 20, 1999 1-2. Without the Consolation of Tears Richard Wright, France, and the Ambivalence of Community. Gilroy, P. (ed.) The Black Atlantic Modernity and Double Consciousness. Mass., Harvard Univ. Press, 1993 146-186. Wright, R. How Bigger Was Born. Chapman, R. (ed.) Black Voices. New York, Penguin Books, 1968 538-563. Wright, R. Native Son. New York, HarperCollins, 1993.