Divided Self Violence In Richard Wright's Native Son

financial and social situation. He knew that they were stuck in this predicament solely because of their race.

A typical stereotype of the black population is used in this novel as a strong theme to rely on to convey Wright’s message to his reader. With Bigger’s mother being a single poor mother in the city with a father out of the picture is leads to conflict between the family and between bigger and himself. Masaya Takeuchi in Bigger’s Divided Self Violence and Homosociality in ‘Native Son’ says that, “ Bigger’s love for his father we might suspect, is mixed with unconscious resentment for abandoning Bigger to the mercy of an oppressive white society and to the emasculating criticism of his mother,...” (Takeuchi 58). When fathers or mothers

Bigger plots to rob a store with his friends and when his plans fall through his temper and pride outbreak. This to him was a chance to get an up on white people.Taking from the whites to better benefit his blackness would give him a burning sensation of a form of victory. When his friends denied the crime he felt that he was being demeaned by not only the whites but his own people as well making him feel even lesser. He took this self-made angry defeat and outlet it by tormenting his peers. This is a form of violence that is very common in the urban city gang community. Know as black on black crime, involving young black lower middle class males and females taking their anger from their circumstances out on those very similar to them creating a cycle of unnecessary

Bigger repeatedly questions and analyses his current actions justifying that white people made him like this and that it was his “fate” that was no longer a question as to what bad thing would happen to him in society as an African-American male. Bigger soon was caught and went on trial for these crimes with the death penalty on the line, Robert Butler in his work The Loeb and Leopold Case: A Neglected Source for Richard Wright’s Native Son spoke on the trial,“But we have had many , many such case to com before the courts of illinois. The loeb and leopold case for example….shall we deny this boy, because he is poor and black, the same protection, the same chance to be heard and understood that we have so readily granted to others?’ (Boris Max addressing the judge in Native Son 376) (Butter 555). This well- known case and crime was addressed numerous times in the novel clearly an attempt on Wright’s behalf to have the reader use the skills spoken of in How to Read