Native Son

Native Son

               Bigger Thomas seems like a normal black boy in the 1930s. He lives on the South Side in a one-room apartment with his mother and two siblings, and spends his time loafing around with a gang. He and his gang rob fruit stands or newspaper stalls and he does bad things in the back of theaters. However, he concealed within him a deep rage and hatred for white people, because they took away his opportunities and barred him from leaving the South Side. He was offered a job from the relief service, which he grudgingly accepted, and he went to report to Mr. Dalton. He chauffeured Dalton’s daughter, Mary, to a building in the loop. There they met Jan, her boyfriend. The three went out that night, and upon returning home Mary was so drunk Bigger carried her to her bed. He then saw her mother, Mrs. Dalton, in the room. To stop Mary from speaking, Bigger put a pillow over her. She died of suffocation, and he then decapitated her and threw her into the furnace in the basement. Then he acted like nothing was different. He quickly ran out once the reporters discovered that there were bones in the furnace, assuming them to be Mary’s. They then trapped him on a South Side rooftop, and quickly brought him to trial. Max, Bigger’s lawyer, argued that he had done this crime by instinct and he didn’t mean it. I don’t believe him. To kill someone is something that takes real willpower and effort to do – something that can’t be brought about by instinct alone. Bigger killed Mary by accident. He may not have deserved the death penalty at that time, but his mindset afterwards was that he was free, he was not guilty. Because his mindset changed from accident to intent, Bigger no longer deserved the right to call his killings an accident. He deserved at the very least life in prison.