Dawn and Dusk

Yep. Back to Native Son. Actually if you didn’t read the book this post should still make some sense, as long as you know Bigger was a black boy in the 1930’s that murdered a white girl named Mary by suffocating her.

Now, to overcome my great fear of being perceived as in any way boastful and to add some character to this post, I shall interject my short paragraph with commentary that seems like it was written by a British critic that was paid by me (a little too well) to write their review. Please read it in a Posh British accent. Thank you!

Thesis: In Richard Wright’s Native Son, the main character Bigger has a noticeable lack of a superego, with a life of oppression and subjugation by whites leading to his primal “Id” taking full control.

“While Bigger’s conscious mind was panicked after the murder of Mary Dalton, trying to come up with ways to frame another person to prevent his own arrest, his subconscious was still. In fact, its apathy was to the point where Bigger felt absolutely no remorse for the murder, as once he got home that night “in five minutes he was sound asleep”. One would think that because he had just committed a murder, Bigger would be overwhelmed with guilt and would be unable to sleep, but the only part of him that was truly fearful was his physical being.”

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Ah yes. Hello. My name is Sir Patrick Henry, and today I will be piecing apart this masterfully crafted essay written by a certain “D.B.”. Now, here in the first sentence, we see the author setting up the claim that there is a disconnect between Bigger’s conscious and unconscious state, which is an integral part of Freudian Psychoanalysis and of the author’s thesis. We see him follow this claim up with some evidence that reveals Bigger’s indolence to that whole “murder” debacle. He proceeds with an explanation of how the reader’s expectations of Bigger not being able to sleep are subverted, and thus makes it seem like Bigger is a bit of a sociopath. He then sets up his next piece of evidence and commentary…

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“As he was decapitating Mary’s body,“

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Ah. Yes. An apology to our younger audiences. Yes, that casually occurs a few pages after the murder. Cheers!

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“He was not crying, but his lips were trembling and his chest was heaving”. As crying is an expression of inner emotions and “trembling and heaving” is simply a result of the primal “fight or flight” response, it is suggested that only his physical being was scared, and he felt no inner sorrow for what he did. “

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Here, the author uses parallel structure to reinforce his point, dividing the evidence into two parts and addressing them individually. Much like what happened to dear Poland in 1939… Regardless, they then apply the two parts to representing inner and outer emotions, revealing another clear separation between the two cognitions of the main character.

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“In fact, quite the contrary. The murder set Bigger’s subconscious and his “Id” free. As Bigger reflects on the murder, he states that it “formed for him for the first time in his fear-ridden life a barrier of protection between him and a world he feared”. Murder is the ultimate power a person can have over another, and after Bigger finally had an opportunity to feel powerful over a white person, his subconscious took it. This idea is further emphasized towards the end of the book, when Bigger states, “I didn’t want to kill… It must have been pretty deep in me to kill!”. It was deep in the mind of Bigger to even think of killing a white girl, and yet here he states that he consciously didn’t want to kill her but did it because of something deep inside him. He stated that “I hurt folks because I felt I had to… they wouldn’t give me no room”, reinforcing that Bigger feels like he is being forced into his own actions through a deep psychological fear and sense of personal entrapment that is propagated by white society. Like a caged animal, Bigger had his instincts and subconscious take control over him and compel him to murder Mary Dalton, as Bigger himself didn’t want to kill her consciously.“

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Here, we see the author uses several bits of evidence to build up to the idea that Bigger subconsciously meant to kill Bigger. Their use of the infamous “It must have been pretty deep in me to kill!” quote perfectly represents this idea, as they move on to point out how this is essentially Bigger’s confession that something deep inside him had meant to kill poor Mary. Finally, they wrap up this “Magnum Opus” with a killer final sentence, with the line “Like a caged animal” being a flawless allusion to how in the book, our dear Bigger was constantly compared to an animal by white society, and was thus metaphorically caged like one.

That will conclude this review. Chip chip cheerio, Au revoir, or whatever other form of goodbye you believe a Brit should say.

Cheers!