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Oppression And Victory Of Bigger Thomas In Richard Wright's 'Native Son'

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Oppression And Victory Of Bigger Thomas In Richard Wright's 'Native Son'
Monique Johnson
Dr. DoHarris
ENGL 501/191
16 November 2014

The Psychological Oppression & Victory of Bigger Thomas in Richard Wright’s Native Son

The protagonist of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son represents a big focal point for racism in America. This racism that the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, feels is specifically aimed at African-Americans. The African-Americans that are truly affected by this racism are young men. Bigger begins to feel the pressures of the Jim Crow laws and racism in 1940s Chicago, which causes him to commit a senseless crime. The oppression that Bigger feels comes from the white society that he lives in and tends to take a toll on him psychologically. Bigger Thomas feels psychological oppression from his white counterparts, but also feels victorious when he kills Mary Dalton. …show more content…
When Bigger wakes up in the morning in Book I of Fear, he is awakened by the loud alarm clock and then by his mother and sister’s screams. There is a huge rat crawling around the kitchenette. Wright states “Bigger crept on tiptoe toward the trunk with the skillet clutched stiffly in his hand, his eyes dancing and watching every inch of the wooden floor in front of him. He paused and, without moving and eye or muscle…The rat squeaked and turned and ran in a narrow circle, looking for a place to hide;” (449). In this description, Bigger can be looked at as the rat because of the oppression he feels from the outside world. Bigger often tries to go unnoticed to his white counterparts because of the racism he
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