Richard Wright begins Native Son with the exploration of fear and what it can do to a person, more specifically a poor black man named Bigger. In Book One, titled “Fear”, Bigger proves the virtue, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” (Franklin D. Roosevelt). While this quote can be somewhat uninspiring in a world where poverty and racism reek, in the case of Bigger it has so much truth to it. It is quite unsettling to discover Bigger’s downfall as one progresses through “Fear”. For someone who is extremely self-aware, Bigger remains so helpless. The reader knows that Bigger’s self hatred contributes to many if not all of the poor decisions that he makes. On page 10 it states, “He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough” (Wright 10). This kind of anger or discontent with life that allows him to think that he will retaliate in a way that ends in death is scary, but it speaks to the way that men tend to handle their emotions. Bigger views the suppression of his feelings and violence as the only answer to his feelings of powerlessness, and he seems fine with this. Wright states, “These were the rhythms of his life: indifference and violence; periods of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of silence and moments of anger…He was bitterly proud of his swiftly changing moods and boasted when he had to suffer the results of them” (Wright 29). Further, when he is playing “white” with Gus, they mimic the way upper class white men speak to each other. Bigger makes reference to J.P. Morgan Chase and the President of the United States. Their game reveals how incompetent they feel in a society that would never allow them to succeed in the first place. Their mocking of white maleness reveals their desire for proximity to it. Bigger desires to fly a plane like white males do and continually states that “they” don’t allow “us” (being black men) to do anything (to make money or be something). The one chance Bigger gets to make some money ends in tragedy due to his fear of blackness and whiteness. Bigger’s attempt to escape the responsibility he claims he does not possess leads him to the death that he tried so hard to avoid. He commits desperate acts of violence as an attempt to cling onto some power over himself and his future. However, his avoidance of his consciousness does not aid him in escaping the fate that he manifested for himself.