It's hard to start something. It's true of a blog, but Richard Wright too had trouble in beginning his novel, Native Son.
"When I sat down to the typewriter... I could not think of a good opening scene for the book. I had definitely in mind the kind of emotion I wanted to evoke in the reader in that first scene, but I could not think of the type of concrete event that would convey the motif of the entire scheme of the book"
The scene that Wright eventually settled on was one in which the reader wakes up with Bigger in the Thomas family's tiny apartment. The family has been terrorized by a large rat for quite some time and it is this morning when Bigger confronts the rat and kills it. This scene, according to Wright, "conveys the motif of the entire scheme of the book", but how?
To answer that, I'll first take a look at the character of the rat, a representation of Bigger Thomas himself. Physically, it's like Bigger in that it's big and black. Okay. But more interesting parallels can be drawn in looking at the emotions behind the boy and the animal. As a more simple creature, the rat has fairly basic, yet strong, instincts and feelings. The one most obviously present here is fear: fear of the other animals in his world and fear of being killed. The rat, like Bigger, tries to prevent its fear by lashing out in violence. It will try to defend itself from the objects threatening its life. Later, realizing it can't win against the larger forces, the rat tries to hide and get back into its hole before it is killed. In the character of the rat, Wright paints us the general picture of Bigger Thomas: a scared man, who will lash out in fear, only to die in the end.
Another interesting point that I could talk a lot about, but instead will just mention: The idea that Bigger is only a product of society and that his life is almost predetermined (key ideas of naturalism) also makes Bigger a "rat" in a maze.
As we can draw many connections between the rat and Bigger, I think we can do the same between the Thomas family's reaction to the rat and white society's reaction to Bigger. In this first scene of Native Son, the family first hears the rat scuttling about and is immediately frightened. This reminds me of early scenes of Book I of the novel, where Bigger is only milling around, but where the tension between himself and white society is definitely present. They are afraid of him (not him specifically, but of African Americans) and he is afraid of them. Then, the rat makes the first move, jumping out in an attack to break the painful suspense, a parallel to Bigger's killing of Mary Dalton. Almost immediately we begin to hear the shouts of Bigger's family.
""Hit 'im, Bigger!" Buddy shouted.
"Kill 'im!" the woman screamed." (p. 5)
Sounds a little like the lynch mob that emerges after Bigger is publicized to be the murderer of Mary. At this point, the Thomas family wants the rat out of their lives. They don't care about the value of its life, only that it 'threatens' theirs. Finally, Bigger throws a skillet and crushes the rat, foreshadowing the crushing of his own life by a power so much larger than himself.
Ending a blog post is pretty difficult too. Completing the last scene was the second-to-last thing Wright did to finish writing his book. But I'll save my analysis of the last scene for later...
One thing that always strikes me about this scene--and I think I mentioned it in class--is the way that Bigger is not portrayed in anything like heroic terms, protecting his family against this vermin. There's no dignity, climbing around the furniture in his underwear, throwing kitchen implements at a rat, with everyone screaming. Bigger is afraid, and grossed out, but we already see him burying that fear behind a veneer of toughness. But there's also a striking cruelty and meanness in Bigger here, as he dangles the rat in front of his little sister, "enjoying her fear." There's no strong emotional attachment to family, and we see a bit of the sadist in Bigger--this moment foreshadows his preemptive bullying of Gus later in the morning, covering his own fear by evoking it in someone he's supposed to be close to.
ReplyDeleteWoah, I literally just finished my post and posted it, only to read your post and find much of what I said already here! I think your take on the rat as a representation of Bigger Thomas is very insightful. I didn't think about how the rat, like Bigger has this fear of the world, and how it's this fear that leads it to be aggressive and to terrorize Bigger's family. In that sense, Bigger and the rat are one in the same, animals driven by a paralyzing terror to respond in anger and aggression. Interestingly, I saw the rat as a symbol of the oppressive world around Bigger. Bigger has been closed in on for his whole life--his physical space is limited and his options (just in all aspects of life) are also limited. First of all, the rat, like the oppression Bigger has faced his whole life, reveals itself to Bigger gradually--first a “light tapping” on the wall and then some invisible running around and finally it comes into full sight. But more importantly, I think the rat could stand for “the rat in a maze,” and so when Bigger attacks the rat he is actually attacking all of his oppressors that have forced him into the life he loathes.
ReplyDeleteThis an awesome post, and something I was almost going to write on before I saw this! One thing I thought of was that Bigger's reaction to the rat is very similar to his societies reaction to him. Sure, Bigger can eventually catch the rat, but in doing so he loses his dignity. Both the rat and Bigger have done something that can be considered repulsive, but during the search and trail of Bigger the truly blatant and evil racist Chicago is exposed. While the city doesn't lose as much of its dignity as it should or as Bigger does, to the reader a truly terrible underbelly has been exposed to us, the reader. What's interesting is that even before we learn how truly detached from his society Bigger feels, he's reflecting it in his tiny apartment. This reminds me of a quote from doctor King: "children may not always respect their parents, but they never cease to reflect them." Just a thought.
ReplyDelete