FREE ESSAY ON NATIVE SON

NATIVE SON

In Native Son, by Richard Wright, the main character 
is 20 year old Bigger Thomas. Growing up poor, uneducated, 
and angry at the whole world, it is almost obvious that 
Bigger is going to have a rough life. Anger, frustration, 
and violence are habits for him. He is an experienced 
criminal, and unable to handle with his wild mood swings, 
Bigger often explodes in fits of crazy, aggressive outrage. 
Bigger has grown up with the opinion that he simply has no 
control over his life. In his mind, he can't ever be 
anything more than an unskilled, low-wage laborer. He is 
forced to take a job as a chauffeur for the Daltons to avoid 
having to watch his own family starve.
Strangely, Mr. Dalton is Bigger's landlord; he owns 
most of the company that manages the apartment building 
where Bigger's family lives. Mr. Dalton and other wealthy 
real estate men are robbing the poor, black tenants on the 
South Side. What they do is refuse to rent apartments in 
other neighborhoods to black tenants. By doing this, they 
create an fake housing shortage on the South Side, and that 
causes high rents. Mr. Dalton likes to think of himself as a 
generous man just because he gives money to black schools 
and offers jobs to poor, timid black boys like Bigger. 
However, his generosity is only a way for him to get rid of 
the guilty conscience he has for cheating the poor black 
residents of Chicago.
Mary Dalton, the daughter of Bigger's Mr. Dalton, 
angers Bigger when she ignores the rules of society when 
it comes to relationships between white women and black men. 
On his first day on the job, Bigger drives Mary out to meet 
her boyfriend, Jan. One thing leads to another, and all 
three of them get drunk. Mary is too drunk to make it to her 
bedroom on her own, so Bigger helps her up the stairs. Just 
as he places Mary on her bed, Mary's blind mother, Mrs. 
Dalton, enters the bedroom. Bigger is scared that Mary will 
give away that he is in the room, so he covers her face with 
a pillow and accidentally smothers her to death. Unaware 
that Mary is dead, Mrs. Dalton prays and then leaves the 
room. Bigger tries to cover his crime by burning Mary's body 
in the Daltons' furnace. Then attempts to frame Jan for 
Mary's disappearance.
A comment by Bigger's girlfriend, Bessie, gives him the 
idea to try to collect ransom money from the Daltons. He 
writes a ransom letter and signs it Red, then talks Bessie 
into taking part in the whole plan. But, when Mary's bones 
are found in the furnace, Bigger and Bessie run away to an 
empty building. Bigger is scared that he is going to get 
caught because of Bessie, so he rapes her and then he beats 
her to death with a brick. Everyone is after Bigger to try 
to catch him and bring him to jail. He escapes the huge 
manhunt as long as he can, but he is eventually captured 
after a huge shoot-out. The press and the public decide his 
guilt and his punishment before his trial even begins. All 
the people just assume that Bigger raped Mary before killing 
her and burned her body to hide the evidence. The white 
authorities and mob use Bigger as an excuse to terrorize the 
entire South Side neighborhood.
Jan is heartbroken over Mary's death, but he finally 
understands that he is partly guilty too. He realizes that 
he was wrong to expect Bigger to act differently to him than 
to any other white man. Jan also realizes that he violated 
all of the rules that apply to race relations. And the 
fact that he did that, angered and shamed Bigger. Jan gets 
his friend, Boris A. Max, to defend Bigger for free. He 
tries to save Bigger from the death penalty by arguing that 
what Bigger did was an affect of the environment he was in. 
Max warns the public that there will be more men like Bigger 
if America does not put an end to the huge cycle of hate and 
punishment. But, even after the trial, Bigger is sentenced 
to death.
Bibliography
Sparknotes.com