Native Son Research Paper

In Native Son by Richard Wright, society poses as the ongoing force of marginalization towards African Americans, specifically African American men. Bigger Thomas, the epitome of a poor black young man struggling to survive in the South side of Chicago, suffered directly from this lash of racism. The novel illustrates the harsh reality of growing up naive, a black male, and impoverished. Bigger’s preconceived jagged perspective of the world that takes place outside of his mind led to the gruesome yet symbolic murder of Mary Dalton. Wright morphes the character of Bigger Thomas from the effects of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome, which is the condition when a population has experienced multigenerational trauma resulting from centuries of slavery
They struggled with major issues such as rape, abandonment, lynching, whippings and being only referred to as “it” or “that”, this slowly lead to the mentality of African Americans feeling subhuman and being treated as such by society. After slavery was abolished on January 31st, 1865, blacks were thrown to the curb and expected to survive still under very poor conditions that were foreign to them due to the fact they weren’t living even on the same continent. There was no absolutely no room for healing or therapy for these slaves due to the fact that they weren’t even treated as a whole person, but ⅗, which resulted in them being stereotyped as having no emotions and only have animalistic traits. Joy Degruy, author of Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing said “Our ancestors learned to adapt to living in a hostile environment...and because they didn’t get free therapy after slavery, these behaviors were passed through the generations” (qtd. in Essence
These oppressive beliefs has obviously been shown several times throughout history, Jim Crow Laws, “chain gangs”, and mass incarceration. These all were acts of vampirism, according to How to Read Literature Like a Professor, vampirism is the “selfishness exploitation and the refusal to respect the autonomy of other people, it’s seen as an old figure representing corrupt outworn values” (Foster 14), which it still is today yet only racism isn’t as blatant as it was in the 20th century, now racism is extremely evident institutionally and systematically. The TACT model represents racism as being historically traumatic; which is, the process of racialization through racial discrimination endured at one point in history that patently creates the conditions for the experience of racism. Historical trauma can be shown in many different ways such as health conditions, social economic status, and mental health. Mental health is a very crucial part of an individual’s life, which can indeed change the way they perceive and abide to the world around them. Psychological influences and effects can cause severe psychological