Bigger Thomas: Just Another "black"

Bigger Thomas: Just Another "Black"

Native Son is a novel that illustrates the life of a "bad nigger", Bigger Thomas, which has to face racial oppression during the 1940s in Chicago. Bigger kills a white woman, and from there, his violence escalated up to his imprisonment. This novel was indeed a protest novel but the novel fails to illustrate a great change in Bigger. There is one question left to answer and that is: Is Bigger the person that society created or was he the person he was intended to be? Although, Wright's intentions was to show Bigger as a human being, the inability to reveal his true emotions, aggressiveness toward others, and the lack of revelation, portrays Bigger as a flat, stereotypical character.

Bigger is endowed with inhumanity due to his inability to reveal his true emotions in situations. Throughout the novel, Bigger bottles up and never make known of his true emotions because of who his friends think he is. In the novel, Bigger was nervous and feared about robbing a white man. They set up a rendezvous, in which they all meet in the pool room before their plan took place. Gus failed to arrive at the appropriate time and Bigger seemed relived but he made it seemed that he was truly mad. "... Gus was not there. He felt a slight lessening of nervous tension and swallowed" (Wright 35). This quote illustrates Bigger's relief of emotions. "If he makes us miss the job, I'll fix 'im, so help me... Gus passed him and started toward the rear table. Bigger whirled and kicked him hard" (Wright 36-37). This quote shows Bigger's tough guy persona but in reality he was still scared and nervous about everything. Also in the novel, Bigger seems to be scared that the journalists were going to open the furnace and find a bone of Mary Dalton. "He was just black clown... The muscles of Bigger's face jerked violently, making him feel that he wanted to laugh...He was full of hysteria" (Wright 206). This quote informs us that Bigger is depicted as a clown to the journalists and his uncontrollable emotions lead him not to reveal himself as the one that killed Mary Dalton. Bigger truly is inhumanity and all the aspects that lead him to be exactly that.

The way that Bigger is always aggressive toward people shows Bigger as the stereotype character that Baldwin criticizes. A stereotype is basically an inaccurate generalization about certain type of people that allows others to treat them badly. Some people that he is aggressive toward are Bessie, his mother, his siblings etc. In the novel Bigger kills Bessie and Mary Dalton. Bessie's killing was very brutal compared to Mary's killing. His aggressiveness makes him the stereotypical character in the novel. "He dragged her across the threshold, and pulled the door after him. He went down the steps; she came stumbling behind, whimpering" (Wright 230). The way Wright describes Bigger being aggressive shows the type of person he really is. It also shows that Bigger could never change throughout