Commentary on Native Son Essay

Never judge a book by its cover. This is a common quote that young children often hear when choosing new friends or engaging themselves in new surroundings. Parents think it is important for their kids to know that to really know someone or something, you have to dive deep inside, and not judge with one glance. Most importantly, this quote relates to Bigger Thomas, the protaganist in Native Son. Throughout the novel, the reader finds Bigger to be quite an extraordinary character, smarter than he really seems. This can be seen in the way he deals with many of the conflicts that arise, such as murder. At first glance, Bigger Thomas just seems like an ordinary colored man back in 1930s Chicago. However, after diving deeper into his character, the reader will find a man yearning to be free and doing whatever it takes to get that freedom. All in all, he is truly a character worth reading about.

From the first section of the book titled Fear, we find out that Bigger Thomas is a very clever fellow, as well as brave and determined in serious situations. While killing a rat that terrified his mother and sister, he never took his eyes off of it and although it got away many times, he fulfilled his goal of trapping and killing it (Native Son,10). However, his determination also proved to be sort of dangerous later on when he tries to cover up his fear. This happens when Gus has second thoughts about robbing a white mans store, which they were planning on doing for a while. Because of his fear, Bigger turns violent and starts beating on Gus. Bigger was on top of him, with the knife open and ready (Native Son, 40). This event really brought out the violent side of Bigger, who was not thinking of the consequences, but only thinking of covering his fear and providing a powerful image to the onlookers. This carelessness earns him a great deal of trouble later on, involving the murder of Mary. But, even before that, Bigger is seen as a very sensitive guy when he first gets to know the Daltons. He feels uncomfortable in their presence and feels that they are questioning him at every moment. Most importantly, Bigger finds it weird that Mary and Jan treat him as an equal and as a friend. He is not used to being treated like this and he hates it mainly because he grew up thinking that the white people were the enemy and whites and blacks just cannot be friends. After killing Mary, Bigger proves to be a quick thinker and a problem solver. They cant say I did it. If they do, they cant prove it (Native Son, 92). Bigger has a detailed alibi figured out right after he murders Mary.

Next, Biggers main conflict may be the fact that he is a murderer; murdering Mary and then Bessie. However, even though he knows he will probably go to jail, these problems do not trouble Bigger, nor do they make him feel guilty. His crime seemed natural; he felt that all of his life had been leading to something like this (Native Son, 101). Therefore, while many people may think that Bigger Thomass main conflict was murder, in Bigger Thomass life, his conflict was never getting a sense of real freedom until he murders Mary. While taking a life away, Bigger himself felt alive for the first time. As a colored man, he had felt imprisoned his whole life while segregated in the colored part of the neighborhood. Also, Bigger blames this sense of confinment on the white people, who have all the chances in the world, unlike him. The knowledge that he had killed Mary, a white girl, made him feel the equal of them, like a man who had been somehow cheated, but had now evened the score (Native Son, 155). Killing Mary did not create a conflict for Bigger, but it was the solution to his conflict of limitations. When he finally gets caught by the police, he basically gives up and lets them catch him. He has felt the freedom he needed to feel, and now that he is an escaped convict, there is no way he will ever be free (Native Son, 253). However, he was content in a way with just having that because it was more freedom than he ever expierienced.

Finally, Bigger Thomas has his own way of dealing with conflicts. His conflict of limitations gets resolved through murder. The fact that he was an escaped convinct gets resolved by Bigger giving himself in. Later on, while in jail, there is the conflict of Bigger receiving the death penalty for his actions. He resolves this by giving up and giving in. He knows that a black man in the 1930s has no chance of making it out alive in his sitation. So what does this tell the reader aout Bigger Thomas? It shows that he is strong willed; he gets what he wants, and when its time to face the consequences, he understands that what he did was worth it in his own way.

All in all, Native Son is an exceptional novel with an exceptional character named Bigger Thomas. Without this one character, there would be no point in even reading this novel, for it would lose its most prized piece. Bigger Thomas may seem like just an ordinary colored man, but he is much more complex than that.