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Humiliate Bigger's Native Son

473 Words2 Pages

What seemingly seems of no importance, language played a big role in how black people felt while encountering white people. Although as it was in the case of Mary and Jan, they did not mean to discriminate or humiliate Bigger, the way they talked also reminded him of their supremacy and the wall so thick between their races. To show the point of language playing a big role in showing division of the two races, we shall take a look at the following passage from Native Son: “You know, Bigger, I’ve long wanted to go into those houses and just see how your people live […] I just want to see. I want to know these people […] Yet they must live like we live […] they live in our country… In the same city with us…” (Wright, 101). This passage lets us …show more content…

All in all, she was raised up, being told about “us” and “them people”. Mary and Jan were blind to recognize Bigger’s feelings. Their failure in noticing that their dinner invitation, shaking hands with him, sitting up front in the car, it all made Bigger very uncomfortable. They put him in a situation he had never been before and did not know how he should have responded to it. They took for granted the fact that Bigger had not been used to deal with white people in other ways than providing services to them. Bigger as probably million others African Americans was not used to the “friendly” approach of white people, it was attributed to the fact that blacks in America were under severe oppression for hundreds of years. That was the only reality they knew. Therefore, the behavior of Mary and Jan was fatally misunderstood by Bigger. Because of the pressure they put on him and the fact that they seemed to ignore his emotions, only made Bigger confirm his beliefs that he was invisible to the white

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