In "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" we get a black
character that represents how Richard Wright's Native
Son influenced the Baldwin's depiction of how black characters deal
with race problems as well as how Baldwin wanted his characters to differ from
Wright's representation.
In Native Son, Bigger Thomas represents what Wright envisioned a white man thought a stereotypical black man was like. Bigger is aggressive, not only to outsiders, but to his family and friends, and he doesn't really express his emotions to other people. Bigger runs with a gang of other similarly aged black characters who, at the beginning of the book, plan to rob a store, another seemingly stereotypical situation that an uneducated adult black male would face. When Bigger gets interviewed for a job as a driver, his personality completely shifts. He immediately becomes very subservient towards the white man who is offering the job, and he doesn’t even seem to be aware that he is acting differently. Another telling moment about how Bigger acts is how he responds to the friendliness of his employer’s daughter and boyfriend. Both of the white people in this situation are genuinely trying to be amicable, and even put Bigger at ease because they know about the problem of race in America and they want to do something to change it. Bigger reacts mostly with fear. He thinks that he will get hurt or something bad will happen to him if he takes the friendliness at face value because he isn’t used to anything of the kind.
The narrator in "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" differs from Bigger’s character in many ways. The first difference we get is simply that the character is very successful in his career. The narrator is able to travel overseas and escape the clutches of racism in the US. The narrator also has very developed emotions which can be seen in the scene on the bridge where he realizes he is in love, as well as his fears and disgust when he is going back to America.
One similarity to Bigger that Baldwin shows happened during the end of the boat ride when he is talking to the customs officers. The narrator thinks that something is off with the officers being nice to him. He thinks that their smiles are hiding something and he is not confident in his ability to skirt around topics that may make any racist tendencies flare up. The narrator’s reaction is very interesting because he has lived without racism being a major part of his life for so many years and yet, as soon as he returns, his thoughts about racism return even though the country may have changed. The alludes to Wright’s depiction as it characterizes the reactions to racism as well as understanding how to get around it as something that society molds into you from birth.
One of Wright’s main points in Native Son is that society firmly molded who Bigger was; he had virtually no choice in how he turned out. We see Baldwin’s defense of the ability of black people to define their own lives through the narrator. He is successful in his career and he is able to make the choice to leave and go back to America. He marries a white woman and has a very nice family. He is able to express his emotions fully to other people and he doesn’t represent a stereotypical black man. Baldwin takes aspects from the characterization in Native Son and then adds more layers and molds the characters to fit his vision of black characters.
In Native Son, Bigger Thomas represents what Wright envisioned a white man thought a stereotypical black man was like. Bigger is aggressive, not only to outsiders, but to his family and friends, and he doesn't really express his emotions to other people. Bigger runs with a gang of other similarly aged black characters who, at the beginning of the book, plan to rob a store, another seemingly stereotypical situation that an uneducated adult black male would face. When Bigger gets interviewed for a job as a driver, his personality completely shifts. He immediately becomes very subservient towards the white man who is offering the job, and he doesn’t even seem to be aware that he is acting differently. Another telling moment about how Bigger acts is how he responds to the friendliness of his employer’s daughter and boyfriend. Both of the white people in this situation are genuinely trying to be amicable, and even put Bigger at ease because they know about the problem of race in America and they want to do something to change it. Bigger reacts mostly with fear. He thinks that he will get hurt or something bad will happen to him if he takes the friendliness at face value because he isn’t used to anything of the kind.
The narrator in "This Morning, This evening, So Soon" differs from Bigger’s character in many ways. The first difference we get is simply that the character is very successful in his career. The narrator is able to travel overseas and escape the clutches of racism in the US. The narrator also has very developed emotions which can be seen in the scene on the bridge where he realizes he is in love, as well as his fears and disgust when he is going back to America.
One similarity to Bigger that Baldwin shows happened during the end of the boat ride when he is talking to the customs officers. The narrator thinks that something is off with the officers being nice to him. He thinks that their smiles are hiding something and he is not confident in his ability to skirt around topics that may make any racist tendencies flare up. The narrator’s reaction is very interesting because he has lived without racism being a major part of his life for so many years and yet, as soon as he returns, his thoughts about racism return even though the country may have changed. The alludes to Wright’s depiction as it characterizes the reactions to racism as well as understanding how to get around it as something that society molds into you from birth.
One of Wright’s main points in Native Son is that society firmly molded who Bigger was; he had virtually no choice in how he turned out. We see Baldwin’s defense of the ability of black people to define their own lives through the narrator. He is successful in his career and he is able to make the choice to leave and go back to America. He marries a white woman and has a very nice family. He is able to express his emotions fully to other people and he doesn’t represent a stereotypical black man. Baldwin takes aspects from the characterization in Native Son and then adds more layers and molds the characters to fit his vision of black characters.
I think this is an interesting point. While I think society has a lot to do with racism, and how Bigger feels, it does not completely shape his character. Bigger doesn't seem to have the option to leave Chicago, as he hasn't ever left his neighborhood, city, or state. It's good that the narrator was able to get out, but it isn't always an option.
ReplyDeleteRemember that Baldwin's main complaint about Wright's "protest novel" was that it characterized its protagonist as virtually without independent consciousness. His options are fully determined and limited by racism, but more importantly, in Baldwin's view, he remains a mostly passive victim of this process, his motives reduced to nothing more than blind rage and frustration. Baldwin characterizes this as a false simplification of an African American character's complex psychological and intellectual response to racism,
ReplyDeleteSo think about how the narrator of "This Morning"--who also feels his world in the United States penned in by racism--reflects a more conscious character than what Wright presents. This has everything to do with the fact that he (like Baldwin himself) has lived for a long time outside the United States: this literally gives him some perspective on American racism, he can see it for what it is by understanding it as a local thing, not an inherent fact of life.