Rape In Richard Wright's Native Son

In the novel Native Son, Bigger is challenged with decisions that test his identity and morals. It is the conditioning created by white people that cause Bigger to make bad decisions. Bigger, A uneducated black man from a poor environment is hired as a chauffeur by a rich white man, things go wrong as soon as he commits his first crime, murder. Events transpire and he is on the run, his back is against the wall and has got nothing to lose. Wright creates this sympathy for Bigger by utilizing “rape” as a way of releasing his feelings of being overwhelmed by white supremacy, his feelings of not having the same freedom as a white person and his fear of the white population.

Bigger is trapped. not physically but mentally and socially. One might think that the connotations of the word “rape” implicate action neglecting will. This connotation is different with Bigger, explained by Richard Wright in the book Native Son, “They would say he had raped her and there would be no way to prove that he had not. That
This concept is tested according to Richard Wright. In the Novel Native Son Wright says “To Bigger and his kind white people were not really people; they were a sort of great natural force, like a stormy sky looming overhead, or like a deep swirling river stretching suddenly at one’s feet in the dark. As long as he and his black folks did not go beyond certain limits, there was no need to fear that white force.” (114). Wright proposes that White people deliberately isolate the black population, they have created their own social laws that dictate the boundaries of black freedom, Bigger knew that he was bound to these laws and is powerless against them. Bigger, in my view is being compared to a rat in a cage, helpless, confused, and scared. This is the result of the segregation of races, and the white population in which Wright constantly stresses the gravity of racism in