{"id":880,"date":"2023-09-10T15:58:33","date_gmt":"2023-09-10T19:58:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=880"},"modified":"2023-09-10T16:01:29","modified_gmt":"2023-09-10T20:01:29","slug":"possession-and-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2023\/09\/10\/possession-and-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Possession and Control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the main events of Book Two in Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son<\/em> is Bigger tragically killing Mary on his first night of work at the Daltons. Throughout the book, we as readers get a great insight into what is going on in Bigger\u2019s head, how he truly feels about killing Mary, and how he feels about the consequences he may face in the world as a result of that. One of the main themes that ran through Bigger\u2019s thoughts, that I noticed, was an aspect of control or possession that Bigger felt after he killed Mary which he had not really expressed or felt prior. Before Bigger killed Mary, he often communicated that he did not have much control in his world, control over his identity as a Black man, control over his ability to get a job and succeed, control over the situation when Mary and Jan were in the car with him, and more. However, after killing Mary, Bigger makes a huge change. He expressed how suffocating Mary, throwing her in the furnace, and knowing all of this \u201cwas something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him\u201d (Wright 105). It was very interesting, but more importantly concerning to see how Bigger felt better knowing that he had something of that magnitude to hold over people. He felt as though the murder \u201chad created a new life for himself\u201d and that he finally had possession over something of great importance to many people (Wright 105). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bigger never really had possession or control over something like this or any property that was exclusively for him before, except for the knowledge and truth about Mary. Having that control over others gave Bigger a lot of confidence in himself and he became fearless. This is all shown for example when Bigger sees Peggy with the letter, when he tells Mr. Dalton and Britten his story about what happened that night, and even when the men from the news question Bigger at the Dalton\u2019s home. Bigger felt as though he is this big mastermind behind the truth about Mary and finally has control over these people who were once so intimidating him. Having control over them with his knowledge makes Bigger feel equal to them which makes him feel better about himself. Because Bigger knew the truth, he was able to control the narrative and conceal the truth about Mary being \u201ckidnapped\u201d. He no longer feared the white people in the same way he once did and even began acting out more fearlessly than he previously did. He raped and murdered Bessie, pointed his gun at Jan, and more; all things that he probably would not have done if it were not for the \u201cconfidence\u201d tragically killing Mary gave him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When reading this on a surface level, Bigger\u2019s newly acquired confidence, which is only achieved as a result of him killing Mary, seems quite chilling and portrays Bigger in an even more negative manner. However, when looking at it more in depth from a different perspective, I thought that it was sad that Bigger even had to do such a thing for him to feel worthy of attention or to feel something in the world. Although Bigger was indeed responsible for his own actions, I can’t help but wonder how much society and the circumstances surrounding Bigger influenced his fate. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the main events of Book Two in Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son is Bigger tragically killing Mary on his first night of work at the Daltons. Throughout the book, we as readers get a great insight into what is going on in Bigger\u2019s head, how he truly feels about killing Mary, and how he … Continue reading Possession and Control<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4683,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[471414],"class_list":["post-880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-native-son"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880","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\/4683"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":884,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions\/884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}