The Story of Bigger
Imagine being a rat trapped inside of a maze. Your destination is determined the very moment you are placed into that maze. The route you take to reach your destination is already determined; the person you will become as you travel along that maze has already been determined. That is the story of Bigger Thomas - a man who is living in someone else’s dream and a place where his fate was determined from birth. This idea is called naturalism - a concept where individuals are influenced massively by their environment.
Bigger Thomas is a young black male from the slums of Chicago. He lived with his mother, Vera, his younger sister, and Buddy, his younger brother. Bigger’s father died during a riot. Being poor, black, and fatherless, Bigger Thomas lives in anger, fear, and envy all at the same time. Bigger isn’t aware of these emotions and yet, he acts on them all the time. This is due to the naturalistic world he was born to. From the moment he was born, his environment was designed to make him poor and feel inferior to white people. As a result, Bigger is always mad and resentful and unconsciously makes decisions based on these feelings.
As previously mentioned, Bigger is filled with hatred due to conditions society has placed upon him. It goes even further than that though. From a young age, Bigger had to step up and become the man of his house. He had to carry an immense amount of pressure that most teens and young adults shouldn’t ever have. Furthermore, his manhood was always belittled by his mother because he couldn’t keep a job or he couldn’t provide a stable income for his family. One could say that this is true but they would be giving no context to his situation. The book Native Son takes place in the 1930s - an era where Jim Crow is prevalent and expressing your feelings towards black people openly is more than okay. Jim Crow affected all black people during the 1930s because it caused further separation of wealth between black people and other races while also making black people the lowest class in America. This is all related to Bigger Thomas because he is a direct product of Jim Crow in the 1930s. His inability to provide for his family drives him to join a ‘gang’ which only causes more trouble for him. Even when he is legal, he works as a driver for the Daltons for a very brief period. The conditions America has placed on black people have caused black people to become a criminal at worst, or a low-paying employee at best.
There is an exception to every rule, meaning that there are black people who are capable of rising above the economic and social barriers placed upon them. These black people usually don’t acknowledge black people or are ‘radical’ and they are very complacent with the rules placed upon them or are very against the rules placed upon them. Either way, the place you come from either influences you to become like others around you, or the opposite of those around you. Regardless, black people live in a world where they are simply rats in a maze.
The "rats in a maze" analogy is such an interesting way to describe naturalism. Bigger's circumstances—having to deal with 1930s Jim Crow laws, needing to provide for his family at a young age, having an insufficient education, etc—are like the walls of the maze that are nearly impossible to navigate and trap Bigger within the maze.
ReplyDeleteI think you made an interesting point that Bigger's family is a significant part of the environment that shapes him into who he is. When I read the book, I didn't really consider the impact that growing up without a father and feeling constant pressure to provide for the family might have had on Bigger, but you did a good job showing how those things shaped his maze and contributed to the emotions like fear and anger that he felt throughout the novel.
ReplyDeleteI like how you emphasize his job options. It's easy to critique Bigger Thomas but it's hard to understand how truly limited his options were. Very few jobs are available to him except service jobs or crime to make some fast cash. There's no possible way he could escape from that because the options simply aren't available for him in the Jim Crow south.
ReplyDeleteI think the last section of your blog post is especially interesting, as it speaks to black people getting out of the horrible conditions white America has manufactured for them, as well as how this process changes or doesn't change them. I do think in some cases black people who make it out or rise above the walls of this maze do turn around and try to uplift fellow black people, but it honestly doesn't happen enough. I think by helping one another out little by little as we figure out how to navigate a world that hates us is how we as a people rise above the maze collectively, but often it feels that this is just a dream unlikely to ever come to pass.
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