Power Struggle in Richard Wright’s Novel Native Son

Power Struggle in Native Son

When moments of fear and uncertainty fall upon us, as humans, we often react in surprising ways. In Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, the protagonist, Bigger Thomas, and his peers deal with a constant feeling of suppression and unease due to the color of their skin. White people stood on much higher ground than black people in Chicago in the 1930’s. Throughout the book, Bigger struggles to find a balance between being who he is and being trusted and accepted in society.

When faced with the absolute power of white people, Bigger reacts dramatically and fatally. In the face of confrontation of someone else’s power, the feeling of fear within Bigger is what causes him to react so negatively. Consciously, he decides to turn that fear around into an attempt to free himself from the firm grips of white power. The need to feel like an individual who has self-power is more important to Bigger than his freedom and the life of others.

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Powerlessness in a power-hungry person creates a never ending circle of trying to break free.

Initially, a crippling fear of white people lives inside Bigger and causes him to feel extreme emotions and perform extreme acts. The first section of the book, entitled “Fear”, shows Bigger going on an emotional rollercoaster from rage to panic to indifference all in a single day. As he gets more nervous about the job with the Daltons, he begins to act on his violent emotions.

The closer he gets to white people, the less he can control his actions. This extreme feeling of trepidation within Bigger always arises when he is faced with interaction with a white person. First, when he and his friends sort a plan to rob a white man, Bigger is too frightened to go through with it and subsequently threatens his friend’s life. Next, when Bigger is in Mary Dalton’s room and Mrs. Dalton enters, he feels scared that the white women will hurt him. Because of this, he suffocates Mary. Ironically, Bigger is much larger and stronger than both the women, Mary being extremely intoxicated and Mrs. Dalton being frail and blind, and would easily be able to (and in Mary’s case, does) physically restrain them from him. But because he knows that they are white and have more societal power over him, he is panicked to the point that he smothers an innocent person. This death is ironic because although Bigger feels completely powerless, he is able to gain power over the person who is the exact representation of who has the ultimate power over him in the first place. The fear within Bigger exemplifies how although Wright created a dislikable and violent character through Bigger, his actions are only a result of the suppression of black people by white people.

After the death of Mary, Bigger realizes that he is not as powerless as he had originally thought and begins to free his mind from the controlling grasp white people have on it. This second section of the book, entitles “Flight”, metaphorically shows Bigger’s escape from the white people’s power over him. Wright sets the character of Bigger up, initially, as a monster, then justifies it by displaying how it was white people and their power in the first place that created that monster. Bigger does not feel any guilt for the death of Mary because he sees it as a symbol of finally finding a way to have power over white people. The fact that the Daltons are rich and famous white people further exposes Bigger’s sense of pride at being able to strip them of their power.

Although white people are the ones in the story who have the power, Bigger is the one who desires it the most. He will do, and does do, anything he can to accomplish his goal of having more power than white people. Bigger is a power-hungry, monstrous, angry person who was pushed into that mindset by the hopelessness of being black in a society that gives no power to black people. Wright shows how trying to constrain the power of an entire culture and hand it to another will only worsen things for both cultures.