Native Son by Richard Wright
“You’re human, Bigger,” Max said wearily. “It’s hell to talk about things like this to one about to die….” Max paused; Bigger knew that he was searching for words that would soothe him, and he did not want them. “Bigger,” Max said, “in the work I’m doing, I look at the world in a way that shows no whites and no blacks, no civilized and no savages…. When men are trying to change human life on earth, those little things don’t matter. You don’t notice ’em. They’re just not there. You forget them. The reason I spoke to you as I did, Bigger, is because you made me feel how badly men want to live….”
“But sometimes I wish you hadn’t asked me them questions,” Bigger said in a voice that had as much reproach in it for Max as it had for himself.
“What do you mean, Bigger?”
“They made me think and thinking’s made me scared a little….”
Max caught Bigger’s shoulders in a tight grip; then his fingers loosened and he sank back to the cot; but his eyes were still fastened upon Bigger’s face. Yes; Max knew now. Under the shadow of death, he wanted Max to tell him about life.
“Mr. Max, how can I die!” Bigger asked; knowing as the words boomed from his lips that a knowledge of how to live was a knowledge of how to die.
Max turned his face from him, and mumbled,
“Men die alone, Bigger.”
But Bigger had not heard him. In him again, imperiously, was the desire to talk, to tell; his hands were lifted in mid-air and when he spoke he tried to charge into the tone of his words what he himself wanted to hear, what he needed.
“Mr. Max, I sort of saw myself after that night. And I sort of saw other people, too.” Bigger’s voice died; he was listening to the echoes of his words in his own mind. He saw amazement and horror on Max’s face. Bigger knew that Max would rather not have him talk like this; but he could not help it. He had to die and he had to talk. “Well, it’s sort of funny, Mr. Max. I ain’t trying to dodge what’s coming to me.” Bigger was growing hysterical. “I know I’m going to get it. I’m going to die. Well, that’s all right now. But really I never wanted to hurt nobody. That’s the truth, Mr. Max. I hurt folks ’cause I felt I had to; that’s all. They was crowding me too close; they wouldn’t give me no room. Lots of times I tried to forget ’em, but I couldn’t. They wouldn’t let me….” Bigger’s eyes were wide and unseeing; his voice rushed on: “Mr. Max, I didn’t mean to do what I did. I was trying to do something else. But it seems like I never could. I was always wanting something and I was feeling that nobody would let me have it. So I fought ’em. I thought they was hard and I acted hard.” He paused, then whimpered in confession, “But I ain’t hard, Mr. Max. I ain’t hard even a little bit….” He rose to his feet. “But…. I—I won’t be crying none when they take me to that chair. But I’ll b-b-be feeling inside of me like I was crying…. I’ll be feeling and thinking that they didn’t see me and I didn’t see them….” He ran to the steel door and caught the bars in his hands and shook them, as though trying to tear the steel from its concrete moorings. Max went to him and grabbed his shoulders.
“Bigger,” Max said helplessly.
Bigger grew still and leaned weakly against the door.
“Mr. Max, I know the folks who sent me here to die hated me; I know that. B-b-but you reckon th-they was like m-me, trying to g-get something like I was, and when I’m dead and gone they’ll be saying like I’m saying now that they didn’t mean to hurt nobody…th-that they was t-trying to get something, too….?”
Max did not answer. Bigger saw a look of indecision and wonder come into the old man’s eyes.
“Tell me, Mr. Max. You think they was?”
“Bigger,” Max pleaded.
“Tell me, Mr. Max!”
Max shook his head and mumbled,
“You’re asking me to say things I don’t want to say….”
“But I want to know!”
“You’re going to die, Bigger….”
Max’s voice faded. Bigger knew that the old man had not wanted to say that; he had said it because he had pushed him, had made him say it. They were silent for a moment longer, then Bigger whispered,
“That’s why I want to know…. I reckon it’s ’cause I know I’m going to die that makes me want to know….”
Max’s face was ashy. Bigger feared that he was going to leave. Across a gulf of silence, they looked at each other. Max sighed.
“Come here, Bigger,” he said.
He followed Max to the window and saw in the distance the tips of sun-drenched buildings in the Loop.
“See all those buildings, Bigger?” Max asked, placing an arm about Bigger’s shoulders. He spoke hurriedly, as though trying to mold a substance which was warm and pliable, but which might soon cool.
“Yeah. I see ’em….”
“You lived in one of them once, Bigger. They’re made out of steel and stone. But the steel and stone don’t hold ’em together. You know what holds those buildings up, Bigger? You know what keeps them in their place, keeps them from tumbling down?”
Bigger looked at him, bewildered.
“It’s the belief of men. If men stopped believing, stopped having faith, they’d come tumbling down. Those buildings sprang up out of the hearts of men, Bigger. Men like you. Men kept hungry, kept needing, and those buildings kept growing and unfolding. You once told me you wanted to do a lot of things. Well, that’s the feeling that keeps those buildings in their places….”
“You mean…. You talking about what I said that night, when I said I wanted to do a lot of things?” Bigger’s voice came quiet, childlike in its tone of hungry wonder.
“Yes. What you felt, what you wanted, is what keeps those buildings standing there. When millions of men are desiring and longing, those buildings grow and unfold. But, Bigger, those buildings aren’t growing any more. A few men are squeezing those buildings tightly in their hands. The buildings can’t unfold, can’t feed the dreams men have, men like you…. The men on the inside of those buildings have begun to doubt, just as you did. They don’t believe any more. They don’t feel it’s their world. They’re restless, like you, Bigger. They have nothing. There’s nothing through which they can grow and unfold. They go in the streets and they stand outside of those buildings and look and wonder….”
“B-b-but what they hate me for?” Bigger asked.
“The men who own those buildings are afraid. They want to keep what they own, even if it makes others suffer. In order to keep it, they push men down in the mud and tell them that they are beasts. But men, men like you, get angry and fight to re-enter those buildings, to live again. Bigger, you killed. That was wrong. That was not the way to do it. It’s too late now for you to…work with…others who are t-trying to…believe and make the world live again…. But it’s not too late to believe what you felt, to understand what you felt….”
Bigger was gazing in the direction of the buildings; but he did not see them. He was trying to react to the picture Max was drawing, trying to compare that picture with what he had felt all his life.
“I always wanted to do something,” he mumbled.
They were silent and Max did not speak again until Bigger looked at him. Max closed his eyes.
“Bigger, you’re going to die. And if you die, die free. You’re trying to believe in yourself. And every time you try to find a way to live, your own mind stands in the way. You know why that is? It’s because others have said you were bad and they made you live in bad conditions. When a man hears that over and over and looks about him and sees that his life is bad, he begins to doubt his own mind. His feelings drag him forward and his mind, full of what others say about him, tells him to go back. The job in getting people to fight and have faith is in making them believe in what life has made them feel, making them feel that their feelings are as good as those of others.
“Bigger, the people who hate you feel just as you feel, only they’re on the other side of the fence. You’re black, but that’s only a part of it. Your being black
Max’s head jerked up in surprise when Bigger laughed.
“Aw, I reckon I believe in myself…. I ain’t got nothing else…. I got to die….”
He stepped over to Max. Max was leaning against the window
“Mr. Max, you go home. I’m all right…. Sounds funny, Mr. Max, but when I think about what you say I kind of feel what I wanted. It makes me feel I was kind of right….” Max opened his mouth to say something and Bigger drowned out his voice. “I ain’t trying to forgive nobody and I ain’t asking for nobody to forgive me. I ain’t going to cry. They wouldn’t let me live and I killed. Maybe it ain’t fair to kill, and I reckon I really didn’t want to kill. But when I think of why all the killing was, I begin to feel what I wanted, what I am….”
Bigger saw Max back away from him with compressed lips. But he felt he had to make Max understand how he saw things now.
“I didn’t want to kill!” Bigger shouted. “But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder….”
Max lifted his hand to touch Bigger, but did not.
“No; no; no…. Bigger, not that….” Max pleaded despairingly.
“What I killed for must’ve been good!” Bigger’s voice was full of frenzied anguish. “It must have been good! When a man kills, it’s for something…. I didn’t know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for ’em…. It’s the truth, Mr. Max. I can say it now, ’cause I’m going to die. I know what I’m saying real good and I know how it sounds. But I’m all right. I feel all right when I look at it that way….”
Max’s eyes were full of terror. Several times his body moved nervously, as though he were about to go to Bigger; but he stood still.
“I’m all right, Mr. Max. Just go and tell Ma I was all right and not to worry none, see? Tell her I was all right and wasn’t crying none….”
Max’s eyes were wet. Slowly, he extended his hand. Bigger shook it.
“Good-bye, Bigger,” he said quietly.
“Good-bye, Mr. Max.”
Max groped for his hat like a blind man; he found it and jammed it on his head. He felt for the door, keeping his face averted. He poked his arm through and signaled for the guard. When he was let out he stood for a moment, his back to the steel door. Bigger grasped the bars with both hands.
“Mr. Max….”
“Yes, Bigger.” He did not turn around.
“I’m all right. For real, I am.”
“Good-bye, Bigger.”
“Good-bye, Mr. Max.”
Max walked down the corridor.
“Mr. Max!”
Max paused, but did not look.
“Tell…. Tell Mister…. Tell Jan hello….”
“All right, Bigger.”
“Good-bye!”
“Good-bye!”
He still held on to the bars. Then he smiled a faint, wry, bitter smile. He heard the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut.
HOW “BIGGER” WAS BORN
To
ABE, BELLE, MANNIE AND LORA
I am not so pretentious as to imagine that it is possible for me to account completely for my own book, Native Son. But I am going to try to account for as much of it as I can, the sources of it, the material that went into it, and my own years’ long changing attitude toward that material.
In a fundamental sense, an imaginative novel represents the merging of two extremes; it is an intensely intimate expression on the part of a consciousness couched in terms of the most objective and commonly known events. It is at once something private and public by its very nature and texture. Confounding the author who is trying to lay his cards on the table is the dogging knowledge that his imagination is a kind of community medium of exchange: what he has read, felt, thought, seen, and remembered is translated into extensions as impersonal as a worn dollar bill.
The more closely the author thinks of why he wrote, the more he comes to regard his imagination as a kind of self-generating cement which glued his facts together, and his emotions as a kind of dark and obscure designer of those facts. Always there is something that is just beyond the tip of the tongue that could explain it all. Usually, he ends up by discussing something far afield, an act which incites skepticism and suspicion in those anxious for a straight-out explanation.
Yet the author is eager to explain. But the moment he makes the attempt his words falter, for he is confronted and defied by the inexplicable array of his own emotions. Emotions are subjective and he can communicate them only when he clothes them in objective guise; and how can he ever be so arrogant as to know when he is dressing up the right emotion in the right Sunday suit? He is always left with the uneasy notion that maybe any objective drapery is as good as any other for any emotion.
And the moment he does dress up an emotion, his mind is confronted with the riddle of that “dressed up” emotion, and he is left peering with eager dismay back into the dim reaches of his own incommunicable life. Reluctantly, he comes to the conclusion that to account for his book is to account for his life, and he knows that that is impossible. Yet, some curious, wayward motive urges him to supply the answer, for there is the feeling that his dignity as a living being is challenged by something within him that is not understood.
So, at the outset, I say frankly that there are phases of Native Son which I shall make no attempt to account for. There are meanings in my book of which I was not aware until they literally spilled out upon the paper. I shall sketch the outline of how I consciously came into possession of the materials that went into Native Son, but there will be many things I shall omit, not because I want to, but simply because I don’t know them.
The birth of Bigger Thomas goes back to my childhood, and there was not just one Bigger, but many of them, more than I could count and more than you suspect. But let me start with the first Bigger, whom I shall call Bigger No. 1.
When I was a bareheaded, barefoot kid in Jackson, Mississippi, there was a boy who terrorized me and all of the boys I played with. If we were playing games, he would saunter up and snatch from us our balls, bats, spinning tops, and marbles. We would stand around pouting, sniffling, trying to keep back our tears, begging for our playthings. But Bigger would refuse. We never demanded that he give them back; we were afraid, and Bigger was bad. We had seen him clout boys when he was angry and we did not want to run that risk. We never recovered our toys unless we flattered him and made him feel that he was superior to us. Then, perhaps, if he felt like it, he condescended, threw them at us and then gave each of us a swift kick in the bargain, just to make us feel his utter contempt.
That was the way Bigger No. 1 lived. His life was a continuous challenge to others. At all times he took his way, right or wrong, and those who contradicted him had him to fight. And never was he happier than when he had someone cornered and at his mercy; it seemed that the deepest meaning of his squalid life was in him at such times.
I don’t know what th
If I had known only one Bigger I would not have written Native Son. Let me call the next one Bigger No. 2; he was about seventeen and tougher than the first Bigger. Since I, too, had grown older, I was a little less afraid of him. And the hardness of this Bigger No. 2 was not directed toward me or the other Negroes, but toward the whites who ruled the South. He bought clothes and food on credit and would not pay for them. He lived in the dingy shacks of the white landlords and refused to pay rent. Of course, he had no money, but neither did we. We did without the necessities of life and starved ourselves, but he never would. When we asked him why he acted as he did, he would tell us (as though we were little children in a kindergarten) that the white folks had everything and he had nothing. Further, he would tell us that we were fools not to get what we wanted while we were alive in this world. We would listen and silently agree. We longed to believe and act as he did, but we were afraid. We were Southern Negroes and we were hungry and we wanted to live, but we were more willing to tighten our belts than risk conflict. Bigger No. 2 wanted to live and he did; he was in prison the last time I heard from him.
There was Bigger No. 3, whom the white folks called a “bad nigger.” He carried his life in his hands in a literal fashion. I once worked as a ticket-taker in a Negro movie house (all movie houses in Dixie are Jim Crow; there are movies for whites and movies for blacks), and many times Bigger No. 3 came to the door and gave my arm a hard pinch and walked into the theater. Resentfully and silently, I’d nurse my bruised arm. Presently, the proprietor would come over and ask how things were going. I’d point into the darkened theater and say: “Bigger’s in there.” “Did he pay?” the proprietor would ask. “No, sir,” I’d answer. The proprietor would pull down the corners of his lips and speak through his teeth: “We’ll kill that goddamn nigger one of these days.” And the episode would end right there. But later on Bigger No. 3 was killed during the days of Prohibition: while delivering liquor to a customer he was shot through the back by a white cop.