Native Son was a novel written in 1940 by Richard Wright about a young African American man, Bigger Thomas, who was living with his family in extreme poverty in the South Side of Chicago during the 1930’s. Bigger commits two horrible crimes in this story and is eventually caught by the police and put on trial. Jan, the communist boyfriend of Mary Dalton, whom Bigger murdered, visits Bigger in jail and suggests that he use the help of his lawyer, Boris Max. Max helps Bigger realize and understand his place in the world and his relationship with his family. Bigger realizes that he has lived his life through fear and anger without meaning. He starts to understand that he has the ability to live a meaningful life and he reevaluates his outlook on white people because of how accepting Jan and Boris Max are.
Boris Max defends Bigger by making the case that it was Bigger’s destiny to be a failed human because of the racist oppression that he has experienced since birth. He argues that Bigger along with any other African Americans are simply products of the society that molded them and consistently told them who and what they were going to be since the day they were born. The economic and social oppression against blacks at the time gave men like Bigger no choice but to provide for himself and his family through crime. The only real jobs that they could get were serving the wealthy whites which only perpetuated the cycle of oppression. Boris says that they cannot sentence Bigger to death if they do not even consider him a human being in the first place. However, Bigger is still found guilty and sentenced to death.
Richard Wright was trying to show the effects that racism and social and economic oppression had on black communities in the 1930’s in America. He wanted to show how white racism forced African Americans into a distressed and dangerous mindset. This is what drives Bigger to accidentally kill Mary Dalton; he did not want to get caught in her bedroom so he put a pillow over her face to keep her quiet and accidentally suffocated her. Wright also shows how the media played a role in this cycle of racism and black oppression. When Bigger goes to the movies, the white people are portrayed as sophisticated and wealthy while the blacks are depicted as brutish savages. These racist reinforcements in the media made African Americans more likely to act in violence and animosity because that is how they were expected to act according to social standards.
I agree about how Boris and Jan’s presence in Bigger’s life revolutionizes his view of possible relations with people of different races. It’s really one of the first few times that Bigger sees that a black man and a white man can have a harmonious relationship without the black man being submissive or discriminated against by the white man. The lack of forced submission that he encounters with especially Boris is important because Bigger works for the Dalton’s a white elite family, a role that perpetuates his oppression as you have pointed out.
I like how you describe the options of black people at the time. The only way they could make real money was to work for white people, which just feeds into the cycle they are trying to break.