{"id":94,"date":"2021-02-21T22:36:54","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T03:36:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/?p=94"},"modified":"2021-02-22T09:29:52","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T14:29:52","slug":"a-little-post-mortem-privacy-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/2021\/02\/21\/a-little-post-mortem-privacy-please\/","title":{"rendered":"A Little Post-Mortem Privacy, Please"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I can\u2019t run from the horror of how our protagonist\u2019s story unfolds in the books \u201cFear\u201d and \u201cFlight\u201d of Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son<\/em>. Still, beyond this initial horror, Bigger\u2019s overwhelming (and near suffocating) fight for privacy levels to my attention\u2019s surface. In class, we\u2019ve been talking about how Bigger is running from what he considers \u201cfemininity,\u201d both around and within himself. He bears a particular hatred for the women in his life (particularly and especially Black women, like Bessie, his sister Vera, and his mother) He associates his own growing \u201chysteria\u201d with femininity\/womanhood, and while he can [inadequately] attempt to hide this \u201chysteria\u201d from those around him, he cannot run from it within himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are moments in the text when Bigger feels like his inner psyche is hypervisible, like when he is driving Mary Dalton around or even, ironically, when he is around the blind Mrs. Dalton. It is this sense of hypervisibility that Bigger seems to be running from throughout the novel. He wants privacy in his mind; he wants to know that his thoughts are his own. For someone to even attempt to understand his thoughts is to attempt an invasion of his privacy. Think of Mary Dalton. On pages 80-81, Mary, drunk, comments on Bigger\u2019s speech patterns around her, observing, \u201c\u2018You know, [Bigger,] for three hours you haven\u2019t said yes<\/em> or no<\/em>.\u2019\u201d (Wright 80).  She then laughs in amusement at what thoughts may be running through Bigger\u2019s head. Wright writes that \u201c[Bigger] tightened with hate. Again she was looking inside of him and he did not like it.\u201d in this moment of social vulnerability, Bigger\u2019s immediate response to being hypervisible, specifically to a woman, is overwhelming hatred. He takes offense to how Mary perceives him; her attempts to look \u201cinside of him,\u201d according to him, make her worthy of being hated and murdered<\/em>. After he kills her, Wright notes Biggers thoughts, \u201cGee, what a fool she was, he thought, remembering how Mary had acted. Carrying on that way! Hell she made<\/em> me do it! I couldn\u2019t help it! She should\u2019ve known better! She should\u2019ve left me alone, Goddammit!\u201d. Bigger treats an invasion of his mental privacy as a crim punishable by death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are other moments when Bigger unlocks a new level of security, secrecy, and privacy in his mind, and the thrill he gets borders on frenzied. The morning after his rape and murder of Mary Dalton, he discovers a new sense of fulfillment at the thought that he can walk around town knowing something that no one else knows. On page 105, Wright writes, \u201cThe thought of what [Bigger] had done, the awful horror of it\u2026formed for him for the first time in his fear-ridden life a barrier of protection between him and the world he feared. It was 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 Bigger is able to live without fear, it seems, for the first time in his young life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why does Bigger want privacy in his mind? Does he seek control, a space to call all his own? Is he ashamed of the goings on in his head? If so, what is he bearing in his mind that might bring about such shame? I would argue that he has intense shame attached to his own \u201chysteria\u201d. He cannot handle others knowing that he has real fears and emotions, that he is emotionally impacted by his environment. Because, to him, that is to be seen as less than a man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can\u2019t run from the horror of how our protagonist\u2019s story unfolds in the books \u201cFear\u201d and \u201cFlight\u201d of Richard Wright\u2019s Native Son. Still, beyond this initial horror, Bigger\u2019s overwhelming (and near suffocating) fight for privacy levels to my attention\u2019s surface. In class, we\u2019ve been talking about how Bigger is running from what he considers … Continue reading A Little Post-Mortem Privacy, Please<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3915,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[471414],"tags":[474967,74774,233453,18034],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-native-son","tag-femininity","tag-masculinity","tag-privacy","tag-shame"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","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\/3915"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/jamesbaldwin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}