Exposition - Native Son by Richard Wright

The introduction

"BRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNG!

   An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room. A bed spring creaked. A woman's voice sang out impatiently:

   'Bigger, shut that thing off!'"

By solely being introduced to the first three sentences of Native Son by Richard Wright, one cannot specifically discern any particularly odd, story-shifting occurrence from this. No, this introduction would rather more likely describe a mundane, matin event for a household, questionably an accommodating and affluent one, indicated by the creaking bed spring and perhaps the impatient mother with the scolding and demanding cry. Unsatisfied with the first taste of this considered "masterpiece" and eager for further revelations to unwrap, I let myself in for the continuation of the novel.

The plot

The name of the first chapter is acting as an embedded theme of the initial part of Native Son, namely "Fear". Bigger Thomas lives poorly with his mother, his sister Vera and his brother Buddy in a narrow one-room-apartment in South Side, a segregated district of Chicago where most inhabitants are Afro-American, just like Bigger and his family. The story is set during about the 1930s, and mutual racial expectations between black and white people were always present within many people. And notwithstanding that it causes a great deal of social problems; to Bigger, the prejudices and racial anticipations affects him at a psychological stage and invokes emotions of anger, hatred, and most importantly: fear.

   Bigger has a gang, consisting of his friends Gus, G.H. and Jack, with whom he often commits robberies and other petty crimes. They plan to rob a white man's store (their first crime targeted at a white man), but the party quickly fall out due to Bigger accusing Gus of being scared and threatens him, but in reality, it is Bigger who feels fear towards the criminal act they are about to carry out.

   Bigger later heads for a job interview at the Dalton's, a fine, white household located in a wealthier part of the city, to work as a private chauffeur. He there finds himself alienated by the white, rich environment and especially so when he barely understands the comprehensive language spoken by Mr Dalton and his blind wife, Mrs Dalton. Bigger is introduced to their daughter, Mary, and is soon assigned to his first task of his employment, which is to drive the daughter to the University. However, Mary meets up with her communist friend Jan instead, and insists on Bigger driving around town, eating and drinking rum with them (to Bigger's repugnance). Mary is later taken home, amply drunk and dragged into bed by Bigger. While Bigger still is in Mary's bedroom, Mrs Dalton is found wandering at night and reacts to the fuss from the bedroom, and enters. Although Bigger knows she is blind, he is terrified of him being sensed and consequently dismissed from his newly-acquired employment. In fear of this, he silences Mary's grunts by covering her face with a pillow, accidentally suffocating her (Mrs Dalton smelt the scent of alcohol from Mary, and quickly retreated). To get rid of the body, he decides to place it in the mansion's heating furnace and let it burn up, and subsequently hopes that people will initially think she has left Chicago, and after a while has passed, suspect Jan for the disappearance of Mary Dalton.

The characters

Bigger is the dark-skinned, prejudiced main character who disdains white people and the society upon which these people have built. This distaste has erupted from casually envying the affluent lives of white people who own fine cars, live luxuriously in large mansions outside of South Side, and have the chance of becoming anything they'd like. The consequent feeling in Bigger's character is fear; fear towards the white ones, as Bigger and his gang exclusively rob stores owned by black people because they're too afraid to commit crimes towards a white person. The subjects of Bigger's fear is not limited to the white society but also include his own gang, as well as his incapability of changing his lifestyle in order to improve his family's decadent state. When the fear inside of him overwhelms him, it takes hold of his actions and he responds with irritation and violence. His act of murder on Mary is later narrated as being the most meaningful act of Bigger's whole existence, indicating his general insignificance to the racist society he is living in.

   Mary is the adolescent daughter of the Dalton family and unlike her parents, she is a revolting communism-supporter who self-consciously wants to upend the views on racial difference between black and white people. She quickly aims to befriend Bigger just for the simple reason that he is a black person, and she pleads for him to show her how people like Bigger live. Her intentions are good in essence by showing such kindness; however, unwitting to herself, this leads to Bigger being surprised, bewildered and uncomfortable. By drawing yet more apparent distinctions between white and black people, this leads to a sort of subtle racism in which Bigger dislikes just as much as ordinary racism. The flaw in Mary's conception is that she merely assumes that Bigger will accept her friendship, and thus fails to see their newly-found relationship from Bigger's perspective.

The title

The title "Native Son" puzzles me, because it isn't mentioned in at least the first part of the book. Although, I can assume that it has a connection towards the fact that Bigger is black, a "Negro", which arguably will be a crucial aspect in terms of the nature of his crime - of killing a white, innocent girl. He is a descendant of the oppressed Negro slaves, who since centuries aback has been fed with hate and disdain, which have developed into fear of the white power in the native Negro people. This same fear has later been carried through generations and consequently passed on to all the native sons, among those Bigger, which uses this empowering sentiment to commit this malevolent crime of his.