Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

An African-American ‘Crime and Punishment’

In 1940, Richard Wright published the literary cannon blast ‘Native Son’. Like a cannon, the novel is messy in its destruction and somewhat scattershot with its targets. One thing that critics of the time (and subsequently) could not do was to ignore this vitriolic outburst.

Wright grabs in his arsenal not only the Jim Crow racism that propels its protagonist, Bigger Thomas, in his extreme actions, but those reliable targets anti-Semitism and Red paranoia. Although some have criticized the novel for resorting to a sentimental slant in the conclusion, I contend that Bigger Thomas is presented as a violent, fearful, brutish young man who would probably continue this behavioral pattern even if he had not committed the abhorrent crimes in the novel. He is not alone in his poverty; thousands of others in late-1930’s Chicago live in circumstances just as dire, if not more so, than his but they don’t all do what he does.

Bigger is fueled by a pent-up rage that erupts at random targets: his friends from the pool hall Jack, Gus, and G.H., his girlfriend Bessie, even his mother, sister, and brother to a certain extent.

When he is actually given an opportunity that his mother is thrilled for him to get, as a chauffeur for the Dalton family, Bigger is terrified. Mr. Dalton owns the company that rents the property where his family live, so in essence his landlord is offering to hire him. He is suspicious of kindness from affluent white people. It throws his entire world off balance. He is asked to drive Mr. Dalton’s daughter Mary to a school meeting. However, Mary instead orders him to pick up her Communist boyfriend Jan and take her to a restaurant/club with which Bigger is familiar and where his girlfriend Bessie works. When Mary wants to sit next to him and have him join her and Jan AS AN EQUAL, he can only react with fear and rage.

The circumstances as Wright presents them contain an inevitability, not necessarily as a rigid predestination but as a natural order of things in this young man’s life. Once the fateful act has been committed, Bigger is severed from humanity. In a sense the act has liberated him:
“He had murdered and created a new life for himself. It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take away from him. Yes; he could sit here calmly and eat and not be concerned about what the family thought or did. He had a natural wall from behind which he could look at them. His crime was an anchor weighing him safely in time; it added to him a certain confidence which his gun and knife did not.”

Wright’s literary cannon is not particularly subtle. The investigator, assorted policemen and state’s attorney are all presented as unapologetic racists that consider Bigger subhuman. The attorney refers to him as that “black ape” and considers him a vile, vicious animal. The Daltons are affluent whites who ease their consciences by acting benevolent toward Negroes and feel that they are doing their race a service; offering Bigger a job as their family chauffer is a prime example; yet at the same time Mr. Dalton’s company rents to the Thomas’s and other black families in substandard dwellings in segregated ghetto districts. Mary’s boyfriend Jan is a sincere Communist who adheres to his ideals even if he is a bit too aggressive and short-sighted in his attitude toward Bigger. Bigger sees him as well as the entire Dalton family as privileged whites whose benevolence masks a condescension toward him and his people. His socialist defense attorney Mr. Max is an eloquent, wise, and idealistic Jewish liberal who is akin to Atticus Finch in his crusade for justice.

There are times when plausibility is tossed aside in behalf of a platform in which varying points of view are exhibited simultaneously. Wright acknowledges this himself in his lecture/essay, “How “Bigger” Was Born,” referring specifically to a scene in which Bigger’s jail cell is occupied by him, a black preacher, Jan, Max, the State’s Attorney, Mr. and Mrs. Dalton, Bigger’s mother, brother, and sister, and Bigger’s friends Al, Gus, and Jack. Even if that many people could fit into such a tiny cell, it is unlikely that so many visitors would be admitted at once. Wright felt that the dramatic impact of Bigger confronting so many different voices and attitudes outweighed realism.

In some respects, ‘Native Son’ is structured like ‘Crime and Punishment’. Both novels set the stage for a protagonist contending with outer and inner forces and circumstances that compel him to act as he does. In both, we enter the minds of these extremely desperate and frustrated young men, leading up to the murders, the internal struggle of evasion transforming into acceptance and resignation. Both characters continue to consider themselves to be apart from the mass of humanity. In Raskolnikov’s case, on the last page of the novel, he begins to realize that he does belong to the large sea of humanity.

However, Bigger, while not denying the horror of what he did, sees that his transgression is the defining act of his life:
“I didn’t want to kill!” Bigger shouted. “But what I killed for, I AM! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder…”
“What I killed for must’ve been good!” Bigger’s voice was full of frenzied anguish. “It must have been good! When a man kills, it’s for something…I didn’t know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for ‘em…It’s the truth, Mr. Max. I can say it now, ‘cause I’m going to die. I know what I’m saying real good and I know how it sounds. But I’m all right. I feel all right when I look at it that way…”

There is nothing sentimental about Wright’s conclusion. By presenting a tragic hero that is not a meek Uncle Tom, his novel contained an abrasive power that the white literary establishment could not dismiss easily. That is the pioneering accomplishment of Wright’s novel.

Bigger’s realization gives him a stature resembling Shakespeare’s tragic heroes Hamlet, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello. He faces the consequences of his actions because he has seized a freedom that his society has denied him. Such an extreme stance has continued to be taken in our current society where racism is unfortunately just as virulent as it was in the 1930’s of Bigger Thomas and Richard Wright.