Native Son character Essay

The protagonist and main(prenominal) vulcanized fiber of Native countersign is bigger Thomas. He is the focus of the novel and the contour of its main ideathe effect of racism on the mental state of its unrelenting victims. Richard Wrights exploration of bigs psychological corruption gives us a perspective on the effect that racism had on the benighted population in 1930s America. Some critics of Native Son have questi unmatchedd the effectiveness of large as a character. For instance, the famous black generator James Baldwin has considered bigger as a alike(p) narrow to represent the full area of black experience in America, just now I believe he is a powerful and disturbing symbol of black rage.As a 20-year-old black military personnel cramped in a clams South Side apartment with his family, larger has lived a life defined by the fear and anger he feels toward dust coats. big is limited by the eighth-grade departure from school, and by the racist real estate prac tices that agonistic him to live in scantness. Furthermore, he is subjected to messages from a popular culture that portrays whites as train and sophisticated and blacks as barbaric and subservient. racial discrimination has severely reduced biggers opportunities in life and thus far his humor of himself. He is ashamed of his familys poverty and afraid of the whites who control his lifefeelings he works hard to keep hidden, even from himself. When these feelings overwhelm him, he reacts with violence. These were the rhythms of his life impassiveness and violence periods of abstract brooding and periods of immoderate desire moments of silence and moments of angerlike water ebbing and flowing from the press of some far-a way, invisible force. (31) large addicts peck with his friendsthough however otherwise blacks, as the gang is too frightened to rob a white man hardly his induce violence is often direct at these friends as well. larger sees white people as an overpower ing and violent force that is set against him in life. on the dot as whites fail to conceive of large as an individual, he does not unfeignedly distinguish between individual whitesto him, they are all the same, frightening and untrustworthy. larger feels small guilt after he perchance kills bloody shame, the daughter of his white employers. In concomitant, he feels for the first time as though his life actually has purpose and meaning. Marys murder makes him believe that he has the power to assert himself against whites. Wright goes out of his way to showthat Bigger is not a conventional protagonist, as his brutality and dexterity for violence are extreme, especially in graphic scenes such as the one in which he decapitates Marys corpse in order to nip it into the furnace.Wright does not present Bigger as a hero to admire, but as a frightening and disturbing character created by racism. Wrights point is that Bigger becomes a brutal killer because the controlling white cu lture fears that he impart become a brutal killer. Wright emphasizes this heavy-handed cycle of racism though Biggers violence stems from racial hatred, it only increases the racism in American society, as it confirms racist whites basic fears about blacks. In Wrights depiction, whites effectively transform blacks into their own negative stereotypes. Only when Bigger meets Max, his white, communistic lawyer, does Wright offer any hope of geological fault this cycle of racism.Through interaction with Max, Bigger begins to perceive whites as individuals. Only when harmonised understanding exists between blacks and whites will they be able to see each other as individuals, not merely as members of a stereotyped group. After he meets Max and learns to talk through his problems Bigger begins to redeem himself, recognizing white people as individuals for the first time and realizing the extent to which he has been affected by racism.Early on in Native Son, Wright describes how Bigger retreats stern a wall to keep the naive realism of his situation from overwhelming him. This passage from word of honor Two shows the destructive effects of Biggers retreat.There was something he k new-sprung(prenominal) and something he felt something the world gave him and something he himself had neer in all his life, with this black clamber of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, intake and satisfaction, been together never had he felt a sense of wholeness. (225)He is separate not only from his friends and family, but from himself as well. It seems that the black psyche is always divided. Biggers mind is split in two, leaving him ineffectual to interact with others and unable to understand himself. It is this quest for wholeness that dominates Biggerslife. Tragically, it is not until he has polish off two women and is soon to be punish that he is able to understand and stab this wholeness. He is thrilled by his new realization, yet tormented by the fact that it comes too late, when he has only infrequent little time left to live.