Native Son
“You know where the white folks live?”
“Yeah,” Gus said, pointing eastward. “Over across the line; over there on Cottage Grove Avenue.”
“Naw; they don’t,” Bigger said.
“What you mean?” Gus asked, puzzled. “Then, where do they live?”
Bigger doubled his fist and struck his solar plexus. “Right down here in my stomach.”
I went into Native Son not really knowing much about it (other than that it was a classic). It had sat on my shelf for a little while and I had not picked it up- frankly because it looked long. Come to find out, the version that I have has a bunch of extra pieces in it other than the novel. After finishing it, I was obsessed and watched everything that I could, including the recent A24 production and read James Baldwins scathing critiques. Although it is hard to argue with James Baldwin, I still view this novel as incredibly impactful and prior to his gruesome actions, I identified heavily with Bigger. Also for this novel to come out in 1940 is simply WILD.
So what had happened was…
The novel opens in a Chicago tenement where our main character, Bigger, shares a single room with his mom, sister and brother. Bigger’s mom tries to motivate her son into maintaining a job, as the aid system they are on is setting him up as a possible chauffer for a local real estate magnet. Bigger huffs and spends his day with his friends, all of whom engage in a little petty crime here and there. Bigger wants to do one last big hit and rob the local pool hall owned by a white man. When his friends are not immediately on board, he becomes infuriated and tells them that they are scared because the owner is White. However, he is truly hiding his own fear. Bigger realizes that he will have to take a job working for a white man rather than rob a white man.
The next day Bigger goes to meet the real estate magnet, Mr. Dalton, who happens to own the tenement that Bigger lives in. While owning several of these tenements, Mr. Dalton sees himself as a good man because he gives donations to the local boys center and is offering this job to a young Black boy. Bigger is nervous around White people and is calculated in every interaction. Bigger meets the family and immediately goes to work. He is supposed to take Mr. Dalton’s daughter, Mary, to school at UChicago. On the way Mary instructs Bigger to take her to her boyfriends house instead. There Bigger meets Jan, a communist, who dislikes the social order and offers Bigger communist pamphlets over drinks. Bigger, Jan and Mary get drunk. After dropping Jan off, Bigger takes Mary home, however she is unable to get up the stairs. Bigger takes Mary to her room, but while in her room Mary’s blind mother comes knocking. In fear of being caught in a drunk white girls room, Bigger tries to cover Mary’s mouth and ends up accidently smothering her. Once Mrs. Dalton leaves he realizes what has happened. Trying to hide the evidence, Bigger throws Mary’s body into the furnace of the house.
The next day Bigger feigns ignorance, points concern toward Jan as a communist, and stays quiet as the Dalton’s search for their daughter. Because the Dalton’s do not suspect him, Bigger decides to try to use the situation to his advantage. He writes a ransom letter and pins the supposed kidnapping on the communists. Bigger drags his girlfriend Bessie into the scheme unwillingly. Bigger returns to work as the media begins to swarm the Dalton home with rumor of a communist kidnapping. It is then that bones are found in the furnace and Bigger flees.
Bigger once again drags Bessie with him as he attempts to hide from the police and the lynch mob that is after him. Bessie does not want to participate, but is gaslit into accompanying Bigger. Who then rapes and murders Bessie. Eventually Bigger is found by the police, severely beaten and put on trial. A friend of Jan’s and fellow communist, Max attempts to defend Bigger and get his sentence reduced to life in prison from the death sentence. However, Max’s attempt to show the deep psychological damage that the racist American society has had on Bigger and connect it to Mary’s trial (note that there is no trial for Bessie, but rather her mangled body is used in support of the prosecutors case for Mary), ultimately fails. In the last pages of the book, through his conversations with Max, Bigger feels seen for the first time in his life and questions why he would only begin to understand living as he is being put to death.
Aiight so boom…
The A24 movie is wack. However, I think it is that way because they attempted to integrate James Baldwin’s critique into the character of Bigger (which might be the best reason for something to be wack I’ve ever heard). In Many Thousands Gone Baldwin criticizes Wright for his simplistic depiction of Bigger as a man with such vitriol and violence, to the point that Bigger borders on a racist caricature of Blackness. Baldwin does not mean to say that Bigger should not be violent, instead Baldwin believes that most Black folks have a Bigger Thomas in them. However, the more interesting question is how do Black folks balance their Bigger Thomas (a personification of feelings of inadequacy, fear and anger) with love and choose life. In the book Bigger characterizes all the Black people he knows as blind to the real world. However, it would be impossible for any person in the book, living in a city wildly segregated in 1940’s America, to be blind to their oppression . Unlike Bigger until the very end of the book, they instead have chosen to live. This courage to live in the face of such adversity is the true tale of Blackness in America, not the psychological trauma portrayed through Bigger.
The A24 film is an overcorrection to try to humanize Bigger (renamed Big). In the movie Big is well-read, from a working class 2 parent household, actually loves Bessie and is not criminal minded. Instead what signifies that he is an outsider is his love of classical music and punk rock. He spends weeks with Jan and Mary before the accidental asphyxiation, never kills Bessie (a welcome change in my mind) and is killed by the cops instead of going to trial. I understand that undiluted Bigger boarders on a racist stereotype of Blackness as broken in the American context. However, when watered down it does not express the rational anger that sometimes creeps up and sits at the pit of your stomach and holds your chest still. Bigger is the shadow of all the anger and disappointment that a Black person may have with the American experiment. Softening and humanizing that specter is not what Baldwin’s critique was about, it rather is a question of where the light of love is that allows the shadow to exist at all.