This post is more of a question than anything else. I just wanted to get it out there before everyone started to push Native Son out of their heads to make room for Invisible Man. After Bigger kills Mary he starts talking about how everyone seems blind. I never really got exactly what he was saying. Blind to what? To him? To their oppression? Although, Mrs. Dalton seems to be the ultimate symbol of this blindness so it couldn't be their oppression. Perhaps it's just general ignorance or lack of insight.
Anyway, we never really went into depth about this in class, so if anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I would be happy to hear them.
Friday, August 29, 2014
Thursday, August 28, 2014
The Third Perspective
There are three primary perspectives presented to us in Native Son. Bigger shows us the first hand experience, and emotional reactions of (some of) the oppressed to their dismal environments. A more reasoned, third party perspective, Wright's own well thought out opinion on the matter, is told through Max. And the media, the protesters, and Buckley present us with the other immediately emotionally involved side; the oppressors. Though I agree the most with Max's perspective, recently I've been thinking more about the media's perspective, because it seems to be what we are the closest to and farthest from in our everyday lives.
On the one hand, you rarely see novels about racism written from the point of view of a racist. Wright had a hard enough time defending Bigger's morality to his readers, it would be extremely difficult to create a sympathetic (white) racist character. These people are demonized almost as much and as thoughtlessly as they demonized black people. One could argue that they are hated for better reason, but they are still almost always portrayed nowadays as evil and one dimensional. We do not question why their minds work in this way, to us they're just bad people.
However, as much as we distance ourselves from these people and our media from their racist newspaper headlines, they are in some ways (of the three groups) the most similar to us. We are not the oppressed like Bigger, and very few are as objective as Max. We are a relatively privileged group with an even faster paced, and similarly opinionated stream of media. It struck me while I was reading how similar their media seemed to our own in terms of pace. The whole social media thing is supposed to be feeding us information more immediately than ever, but the news papers in Native Son seemed to be doing almost as good of a job. It only takes a couple of hours for a story to come out and Bigger can follow the knowledge of the authorities almost in real time. In the book and today, this immediacy and freshness of the information we receive inspires a very personal reaction. It also forces the media to make assumptions. The result being that we all jump to conclusions and forget to think things through sometimes.
On top of this, though our media may not be so blatant as to blame the "tragedy of communist and racial mixture", everything we hear assumes an undoubtedly flawed set of morals. We all hate some group of people- for example, racists. Not that I am necessarily equating racism with hating racists- but the hate is similarly instinctive, and both foster a very one dimensional view of the other party.
We also still have mobs storming court rooms before a verdict is even reached- though most recently, ironically, the people are protesting a white cop for unjustly shooting a black kid. (He's probably guilty, but the similarities are interesting. And I think it's good that the case is getting attention, but people should be careful not to decide on a verdict before all the evidence has been presented.)
While Native Son does a wonderful job of defending Bigger's acts (which without context would be utterly unthinkable) even Wright fails to portray Bigger's enemies as anything other than an unfortunate combination of ignorance, manipulation, and hatred. The one redemption the book offers them is that they may have fallen prey to their own sub-optimal environments, just as Bigger has fallen prey to the one they created for him. I personally like this way of looking at it. And, despite the burning desire I have to punch Buckley in the face every time he opens his stupid mouth, it's important to consider why he and those like him believe what they do, and keep in mind that they are people too.
On the one hand, you rarely see novels about racism written from the point of view of a racist. Wright had a hard enough time defending Bigger's morality to his readers, it would be extremely difficult to create a sympathetic (white) racist character. These people are demonized almost as much and as thoughtlessly as they demonized black people. One could argue that they are hated for better reason, but they are still almost always portrayed nowadays as evil and one dimensional. We do not question why their minds work in this way, to us they're just bad people.
However, as much as we distance ourselves from these people and our media from their racist newspaper headlines, they are in some ways (of the three groups) the most similar to us. We are not the oppressed like Bigger, and very few are as objective as Max. We are a relatively privileged group with an even faster paced, and similarly opinionated stream of media. It struck me while I was reading how similar their media seemed to our own in terms of pace. The whole social media thing is supposed to be feeding us information more immediately than ever, but the news papers in Native Son seemed to be doing almost as good of a job. It only takes a couple of hours for a story to come out and Bigger can follow the knowledge of the authorities almost in real time. In the book and today, this immediacy and freshness of the information we receive inspires a very personal reaction. It also forces the media to make assumptions. The result being that we all jump to conclusions and forget to think things through sometimes.
On top of this, though our media may not be so blatant as to blame the "tragedy of communist and racial mixture", everything we hear assumes an undoubtedly flawed set of morals. We all hate some group of people- for example, racists. Not that I am necessarily equating racism with hating racists- but the hate is similarly instinctive, and both foster a very one dimensional view of the other party.
We also still have mobs storming court rooms before a verdict is even reached- though most recently, ironically, the people are protesting a white cop for unjustly shooting a black kid. (He's probably guilty, but the similarities are interesting. And I think it's good that the case is getting attention, but people should be careful not to decide on a verdict before all the evidence has been presented.)
While Native Son does a wonderful job of defending Bigger's acts (which without context would be utterly unthinkable) even Wright fails to portray Bigger's enemies as anything other than an unfortunate combination of ignorance, manipulation, and hatred. The one redemption the book offers them is that they may have fallen prey to their own sub-optimal environments, just as Bigger has fallen prey to the one they created for him. I personally like this way of looking at it. And, despite the burning desire I have to punch Buckley in the face every time he opens his stupid mouth, it's important to consider why he and those like him believe what they do, and keep in mind that they are people too.
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