Native Son 1185of racial alienation, he even tears a cross from his
throat, comparing it to one of the Ku Klux Klan.
This moment connects his feelings about race and
religion in a dramatic way.
In the end, Bigger endures a tragic fate. His
mother’s warnings from early in the novel all ring
true, and his feelings of rejection are made absolute
as he is condemned for his crimes. In this sense,
Native Son’s theme of rejection unearths a dramatic
paradox. The rejection of Bigger is acceptable, but
Bigger’s rejection of society is not.
Kaleem Ashraf
Sur vIvaL in Native Son
The opening scene of Native Son depicts the black
teenager Bigger Thomas, his sister Vera, brother
Buddy, and their mother, all packed into a rat-
infested one-room apartment in Chicago. Imme-
diately, this evokes a sense of collective survival
through poverty and social deprivation, although
there are many other highly individualized manifes-
tations of survival in the novel.
Bigger’s survival is represented in a number
of ways. Primarily, his survival is based on crime,
as exemplified by the plan he shares with his trio
of poolroom friends, Gus, G. H., and Jack, to
rob Blum’s grocery, but such routine has procured
little financial reward; his actual survival is therefore
based on escapism. In one instance, Bigger debates
whether to use his mother’s money on carfare to the
Daltons’ home, where he is expected for a job, or to
spend it on a ticket to the movies, where he can take
sanctuary from the world in a manner that requires
no exertion. His escapist tendencies also show up
in how, throughout the novel, he wishes to “blot”
out things around him—a form of wishing reality
away. In concrete terms, Bigger must survive racial
prejudice. Looking up into the sky (a metaphor for
psychological flight), he and his friend Gus discuss
how white men are able to fly planes, proof that
they are given every chance to fulfill their ambitions.
Separately, in a game of “playing white,” they por-
tray the world as deliberately configured to exclude
blacks. Bigger compares survival in this situation to
living in jail or having a “red hot iron” in his throat.
More subtly, Bigger must survive his own social
ineptitude in the presence of whites, as exemplified
by his employment with the affluent Dalton family.
So conditioned is he to the mores of racial prejudice
and his position as an outcast from the members
of his own family, Bigger is unable to comprehend
the acts of kindness extended to him by the young
Mary Dalton and her friend Jan. Mary describes
herself as his ally, while Jan—a white man—tries to
shake his hand, situations for which Bigger is totally
maladapted.
The most obvious expression of survival in
Native Son concerns whether Bigger will escape
incarceration after his murder of Mary Dalton, in
the portions of the book entitled “Flight” and “Fate.”
During this time, he must survive any possible sus-
picion from the Daltons as well as an interrogation
by Mr. Britten (a private investigator hired by Mr.
Dalton when Mary goes missing). More signifi-
cantly, Bigger’s survival depends on whether he can
overcome the condemning nature of guilt, particu-
larly in his encounters with Jan and, later, Bessie, a
girlfriend to whom he admits his crime.
The character of Vera represents survival through
subservience. In Bigger’s opinion, Vera is her moth-
er’s pliable subject, always doing and believing what
she is told, as seen in the way she sets the table as
soon as she is instructed. She accepts her mother’s
views of Bigger uncritically, duly admonishing him
about staying out of trouble and holding down a
regular job. For Bigger, Vera’s simple acceptance of
the social order around her is childishly catastrophic
and represents a central philosophical question in
Native Son regarding the value of survival through
such acceptance.
Bigger’s mother represents survival through con-
trol of her children. As a lone parent, she openly pins
her hopes of financial security on Bigger, frequently
criticizing his attitude to Vera and Buddy. Bigger
finds this especially demeaning in relation to Vera,
but comparably acceptable with Buddy, whom he
quietly respects for his “toughness.” A famous criti-
cism of Wright made by James Baldwin is that we
are limited to Bigger’s viewpoint of his family and
the world, cutting out a necessary dimension of the
novel. Indeed, Vera’s and Buddy’s opinions of Bigger
are not exposed by Wright explicitly, though Native
Son is best considered a meditation on the psychol-
ogy of its main protagonist, Bigger Thomas.