In our class
discussion on Native Son it came up a lot that Bigger was a
product of his environment. As we discussed I began to think about exactly
which parts of Bigger's environment were causing him to turn out the way he
became, because his environment wasn't all bad. He had the influences of his
mother whose good intentions landed him a job and tried to keep him out of trouble. I
think the part of his environment that influenced him the most to do what he
did both when he killed Mary and in his subsequent actions was fear.
In particular one scene
that really exemplified all the fear in his environment was his confrontation
with Gus in the pool hall. That scene was a crazy convoluted mess of fear. He
had planned to rob Blum's store with his gang, but he was afraid of robbing a
white man. But he also knew that he couldn't show his fear to his friends, so
he had to find another way to stop the robbery from happening without making it
seem like he didn't want to rob Blum's. So he confronted Gus claiming that Gus
was afraid and intimidating Gus. In reality Gus was more afraid of Bigger than
of robbing Blum's and he leaves because of this fear. This gives Bigger the
result he wanted without him losing any face among his gang.
This fear in his environment
molds him to think irrationally when he is in situations where he becomes
afraid. An example of this is after he kills Mary accidently he immediately is
afraid of repercussions, but instead of telling someone that it was an accident
he decides that it would be best to burn her body and blame it on Jan. Another
example is when he decides to write a kidnap note that blames the Communists.
This isn't a rational decision but he is so afraid of what will happen that the
fear forces him to make these kinds of decisions.
In the end he is caught
and faces a much worse fate than what he might have encountered if he had told
the truth from the beginning. Bigger is a product of his environment, but more importantly
he is a product of the fear in his environment and I think that is what causes
him to act in the ways that he does.
