Bigger’s acts of aggression can’t be redressed by prison time, because they are ultimately a symptom of confinement. Throughout the novel Native Son, by Richard Wright, the protagonist Bigger suffers from excessive pressure from external influences. These external pressures are initially proposed as vague, fleeting senses of awareness of a truth so large it seems inaccessible to Bigger for the majority of the novel. The reader eventually comes to understand that this truth of his inevitable confinement is, in part, embedded in Bigger’s interactions with white people and the white world. This tension becomes a form of confinement, and becomes responsible for his aggressive choices, which fails to redress under the further confinement of prison time.
The tension between Bigger, and the white world is addressed directly throughout his first meeting with Mr. Dalton. The narrator describes Bigger being hyper aware of “every inch of skin on his black body” (Wright, 46), and seeming to forget how to be comfortable. Bigger’s discomfort around Mary, who is first introduced in this same scene, eventually comes to embody the tension between Bigger and the white world. This dynamic remains tenuous for the entirety of the novel. Mary comes to represent, beyond Bigger’s relationship with the white world, the place that has been found for him in it, or a place he will inevitably end up. The pervasive stereotype of a black man raping a white woman becomes a low hanging cloud, casting a shadow over any hope Bigger can have of escaping the inevitable. A black man raping a white woman is treated as an eventuality, rather than a possibility. Bigger is keenly aware of this, throughout and after his interactions with Mary. While Bigger carries a drunken Mary out of her car, his internal narration is largely composed of stress that someone will see them, and assume that he has raped her. “Suppose old man Dalton saw him now?” is a seemingly casual statement,but is his first thought as he touches Mary. The instantaneous reaction of assuming the worst case scenario represents how Bigger views his own relationship with the white world. He possesses an awareness, unbeknownst to him, that he cannot escape playing out the stereotype. This awareness is a core part of the internal confinement Bigger experiences.
Further emphasizing Bigger’s relationship with the white world, and the pressure he feels, is Mary’s accidental murder. Bigger places the pillow over her face in an attempt to silence her, for fear that Mrs. Dalton may discover him in her room and assume he has raped her. This ironically kills her, leaving Bigger in the same position he has feared, having assaulted a white woman. Accidentally fulfilling the stereotype that governs his life, and had attempted to avoid at all costs, Bigger feels a momentary sense of relief, having “shed an invisible burden he had long carried” (114). Bigger feels this sense of relief, having trespassed on an invisible boundary that has always been tenuously inaccessible, but present nonetheless.
Prison time, being presented as the logical option of punitive justice to serve as the consequences of Bigger’s actions, is fundamentally incompatible as a form of redress with what the reader has come to understand as the true problem. Bigger, in his murder of Mary, acted out of fear dictated by the inescapable reality of his confinement. Leaving Mary to potentially make noise and reveal his presence in her room would have the same eventual consequence of her murder. One could even argue that Bigger going to prison was completely inevitable. However, his actions were a symptom of confinement, him attempting to live within the invisible boundaries drawn around him. Further confinement, evolving psychological confinement to literal confinement by means of prison time provides no substantial redress, but merely perpetuates the circumstances that contribute to this cyclical passage.
Literary Musings 