The argument has been made that the whole chain of events that took place in Native Son are not really Bigger’s fault, since society shaped him to think and act the way he did. To a certain point, I agree. There are a lot of things Bigger did that I really hated, but I understood why he did them. Even so, there are some things I forgive him for more than others.
In the first scene of the book Bigger is at home, where I found him to be very emotionally distant from his family. It seemed that he didn’t like them and felt forced to provide for them, eventually only taking his job at the Dalton’s because he would starve otherwise. This is sad, but understandable, since I’m sure he feels like he has no privacy because they all share a single room, and he may even feel ashamed that he can’t provide for his family. I think his feeling of powerlessness affects the way he acts most of the time, and he tries to overcompensate by making himself look like he has control. He acts this way with his friends, as we see when Bigger tries to show how strong and powerful he is, and even threatened Gus to hide his weakness.
In class, we also spent a lot of time discussing how helpless Bigger feels throughout the book. He expresses this feeling at the beginning of the book, when he says “They don’t let us do nothing” (19) in reference to white people. This also helps me understand many of the actions that he takes, although there were many things he did that made me very mad about the whole situation.
For instance, I get that Bigger felt he had to make his presence in Mary’s room unknown to Ms. Dalton, since he was probably right in assuming that people would have accused him of rape. But if we’re rooting for Bigger to avoid getting in trouble (which I think we all sort of were after listening to all of his thoughts throughout the book), he should have handled the situation differently. I think the first mistake he made was doing anything after he realized she was dead. If he had just left Mary where she was, the family may have assumed that she had died of alcohol poisoning. Cutting Mary’s head off and putting her in the furnace is what got him caught in the first place.
Another thing that really bothered me was that Bigger let his hunger for power take over when he was with Bessie. I don’t really approve of the way he treated Bessie in general, but I understood that, in his position, he wanted her help. What I really hated happened after Bigger was discovered as guilty and tried to hide. Bessie kept crying that she wanted to kill herself, but Bigger kept telling her that she was being crazy. Then Bigger raped and killed her himself. That by itself is awful, but the fact that Bigger had to have control over that situation made me angry. It was like she couldn’t be killed unless he did it himself, and he had all the power over the situation.
Obviously there are a lot of other things that I struggled with while reading the book, but these are just two of the ones I thought about the most. Feel free to rant about other situations in the comments!
