Bigger Thomas's Descent Towards Being Term Paper

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Tracing these developments in the novel, the succeeding discussion illustrates the character transition of the protagonist through his relationships and interaction with other characters in the novel.

As a discriminated individual, Bigger had learned not to expect more from his community and society, limiting his dreams in life by earning just enough money to allow him and his family to eat for a day, as well as provide for some basic needs. Wright provides a glimpse of Bigger's psyche, which explained why his behavior and attitude towards life was full of bitterness and limitations (13):

He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them. He knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain...He knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough.

Indeed, Bigger's character was depicted in the most negative light, primarily because his tough attitude and personality are traits that his society expected him to have, being a poor black American. The harsh realities of every black American in the hostile white American society showed how, in effect, they reinforce and perpetuate their marginalization in the society. That is, the marginalized aid in their own marginalization. By joining gangs and involving himself with petty offenses like thievery and robbery, Bigger was trying to act for both practical and philosophical reasons: robbery seemed to be the most practical means by which he can obtain money for him and his family, while it (robbery) also acts as his own way of retaliating, of protesting and acting against the feeling of oppression and disadvantage that he, as a black American, experiences compared to the white Americans.

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It is evident that the strained relationship that he had for his family was Bigger's way of loving them -- that is, by redeeming them from his anger and frustration of being poor and oppressed, he instead puts these feelings into action through robbery and by detaching himself from his family.

His transcendence towards becoming a convicted criminal began from the time he became Dalton's chauffeur. Ironically, what would have been Bigger's opportunity to live an honest life and have a steady income also marked the moment where he was doomed to live a life of a criminal. Under unfortunate circumstances, Bigger became an unwitting murderer to Mary. This mistake, though accidental, determined his other actions, which were consciously committed, particularly the rape and frustrated murder of Bessie, his former girlfriend.

At this point, Bigger had finally allowed himself to be affected by his reality, but nevertheless sought to escape it through death. Towards the end of the novel, he knew that being convicted was his fate, and that death was the only salvation that he can have in order to escape the harsh, and oftentimes, unfair realities of his life as a black American. As in the words of his lawyer, Max, during his trial, Bigger was an individual who was the product of a society who is blinded to these harsh realities that marginalized peoples like the black Americans feel everyday: "...in our blindness we have so contrived and ordered the lives of men that the moths in their hearts flutter toward ghoulish and incomprehensible flames!" (367).

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