In the past few weeks, we as a class have been talking at length about the significance of Bigger\u2019s presence and narrative in American literature and society. We talked about him being a product of society, and suggested that everything that makes Bigger \u201cmonstrous\u201d is a result of the inescapable oppression which he faces in his daily life. It wasn\u2019t until I read Baldwin\u2019s essay \u201cMany Thousands Gone\u201d that I understood why Wright\u2019s depiction of Bigger did not fully resonate with me and with this particular story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In my opinion, I align with Baldwin\u2019s stance that details Wright\u2019s descriptions of Bigger as \u201cdehumanizing.\u201d Bigger embodies the rage, the pain, the confusion, and the despair that Black individuals feel living in America, but in trying to emulate all of these emotions within Bigger, Wright reduces Bigger to a vessel of representation for everyone\u2019s emotions and motivations but his own. \u201cBigger has no discernible relationship to himself, to his own life, to his own people, nor to any other people — in this respect, perhaps, he is most American — and his force comes, not from his significance as a social (or anti-social) unit, but from his significance as the incarnation of a myth<\/strong>.\u201d Baldwin states this problem clearly — when a writer reduces a Black character into something that is purely made up of other people\u2019s assumptions in these \u201cprotest novels,\u201d it leads us all to \u201cbelieve that in Negro life there exists no tradition\u201d since they lack intrinsic individuality and are only able to feel emotions and think thoughts that have been imposed upon them.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In framing Bigger\u2019s life around the constructs and myths perpetuated by society, Baldwin writes that the nature of these protest novels \u201creject life,\u201d since the driving force behind these narratives are caught in cycles of rage and oppression. \u201cWithin this web of lust and fury, black and white can only thrust and counter-thrust, long for each other\u2019s slow, exquisite death\u2026 Thus has the cage betrayed us all.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the past few weeks, we as a class have been talking at length about the significance of Bigger\u2019s presence and narrative in American literature and society. We talked about him being a product of society, and suggested that everything that makes Bigger \u201cmonstrous\u201d is a result of the inescapable oppression which he faces in … Continue reading Wright’s “Native Son” and the Incarnation of a Myth<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3923,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3923"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":188,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}