Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son follows Bigger Thomas as he navigates the precipitous race relations of 1930s Chicago. Bigger\u2019s impoverished lifestyle and exposure to systemic racism each inform the events of the novel, most notably his murdering both Mary, a wealthy white heiress, and Bessie, his black girlfriend. Native Son and, indeed, Wright himself argue that Bigger\u2019s actions are not his own; rather, the text employs the philosophical doctrine of determinism.
The hard determinism which characterizes Native Son asserts that all behavior is governed by forces beyond our control: free will is only an illusion. It is Bigger\u2019s upbringing, socioeconomic status, and environment, rather than Bigger himself, which decide his fate: he is followed by \u201cthe feeling of being always enclosed in the stifling embrace of an invisible force\u201d (150); in Wright\u2019s eyes, Bigger, then, is not responsible for his crimes. I tend to disagree with this approach, because I believe Bigger does exhibit some degree of autonomy and that he is thus culpable for his actions. What Native Son and Wright neglect to address is the existence of soft determinism.
Soft determinism is a level of determinism which allows for the existence of free will, if only a somewhat restricted form. This would mean that Bigger\u2019s lower class origins do not force him to rob as he has prior to the events of the novel, but rather increase the likelihood that he will rob out of desperation. I would argue that we see Bigger demonstrate this free will when he sabotages the robbery of Blum\u2019s shop: he cleary faces a crossroads and makes a decision that, while strongly influenced by numerous internal (e.g. race) and external (e.g. society) forces, is ultimately his own (41).
Likewise, Bigger\u2019s decisions to kill Mary and especially to rape and murder Bessie, while largely influenced by the racial tensions and intense misogyny which shape the landscape of his life, are still just that: decisions. I may be biased because I admittedly find Bigger a reprehensible character (oop), but I do believe that he is responsible for his crimes. For Wright to take a purely deterministic approach seems both heavy-handed and extreme. It only validates Bigger\u2019s constant victim-blaming and sadism in a way that overshadows what I interpret to be the novel\u2019s entire point, which is to expose the ways in which society cruelly manipulates and dehumanizes black lives.
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Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son follows Bigger Thomas as he navigates the precipitous race relations of 1930s Chicago. Bigger\u2019s impoverished lifestyle and exposure to systemic racism each inform the events of the novel, most notably his murdering both Mary, a wealthy white heiress, and Bessie, his black girlfriend. Native Son and, indeed, Wright himself argue that … Continue reading Hard and Soft Determinism in Native Son<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3922,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[474648],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son","tag-determinism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","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\/3922"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}