The Patriarchal Society

Bigger's next crime is a completely conscious decision and much more gruesome than the first. The rape and brutal murder of his girlfriend, Bessie, is committed for the purpose of covering his tracks. He has recognized that she is a threat to his newfound sense of freedom and feels no remorse in removing an obstacle. Aside from the practical, though cold-blooded, purpose for murdering Bessie, Bigger has another motive for claiming her life: he has found, after killing Mary Dalton, that the act of murder gives him a sense of identity and he is fully aware of this fact. Bigger states "I killed 'em 'cause I was scared and mad. But I been scared and mad all my life and after I killed that first woman, I wasn't scared no more for a little while" (Wright-Native p328). Bigger no longer felt scared because he has exercised some control over his previously uncontrollable environment; he has shown that he has the power to create change - "He had murdered and had created a new life for himself" (Wright-Native 119).

Despite the fact that Bigger is eventually sentenced to death, his acts of violence have given him the first freedom that he has felt. For Bigger, killing is a way to feel, to gain an identity:

I didn't want to kill...but what I killed for I am! ... 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". (Wright-Native p392)

This common theme of the acquisition of power and freedom through violence is a direct reflection of various individuals Wright had known in the course of his life. Guest described these individuals as "men willing to be executed as condemned murderers and rapists for the sake of a " 'sweet brief spell' of freedom and self-determination" (Guest p100). Native Son was Wright's first novel and it was his first work, with the possible exception of Uncle Tom's Children, to achieve a measure of commercial success and international fame. This fame allowed Richard Wright to express his message, his social commentary, that the American apartheid allows the black male few ways out of his oppressed conditions; many young African American males in this oppressive system feel that violence, an uprising, against the dominant social forces is the only avenue open to them. Many sociologists and philosophers including Karl Marx and Frederick Engels have touched upon this social theme of uprising: "The law, morality, religion, are for him so many [white] prejudices that hide just as many [white] interests... the [black male], the lowest stratum of present-day society, cannot lift itself up, cannot raise itself up, without flinging into the air the whole superstructure of social strata which form the establishment" (Marx and Engels p22). This theme is also well represented in another of Wright's works, The Man Who Was Almost a Man.

The protagonist of The Man Who Was Almost a Man is Dave, the son of an illiterate sharecropper (much like Wright himself). Dave's main goal in this story is to acquire a firearm, a figurative manifestation of violence, so that he may be considered a man. We can see from Dave's desire to become a man that he has relatively normal goals (to be respected and have responsibility); however, the oppression of his environment has twisted/perverted his methods for obtaining and his perception of respect and responsibility.

It quickly becomes evident that David feels confined in his current environment. He gets no respect from his peers, who "talk to him as though he were a little boy" (Wright-Eight p9); no respect from his parents who don't even let him keep his own money; no respect from Mister Joe, who laughs at him when he claims to be a man; and no respect from Mister Hawkins who laughs at him when he 'buys' a dead mule. David feels powerless in this oppressive environment and believes that owning a gun is the only way he can get respect: this is evidenced by the quote "One of these days he was going to get a gun and practice shooting, then they couldn't talk to him as though he were a little boy" (Wright-Eight p9). Generally, he gets no respect from anybody, has no responsibility, is kept on a 'short leash' and is granted no one over which to exercise control; Dave is being denied the chance to become a man. Anthony Dawahare demonstrates the relationship between race and the ability to become a man in the patriarchal society:

[Wright's] Depression Era works suggests that, since all male workers are raised in a patriarchal society, their feelings of powerlessness can evoke feelings of emasculation. Wright shows how these feelings of emasculation can be intensified for black men, since they are extra-oppressed by racism and are symbolically emasculated as "boys". (Dawahare p452)

Within Dave's environment, there are no positive role models, black or white. His mother shows herself to be quite irresponsible by allowing Dave to buy a gun, Mister Joe allows a young man to buy a defective gun for two dollars, and Dave's father is rarely around to offer advice because he must work in the fields all day to support his family. The oppressive environment has created a dearth of father figures to show Dave the proper methods for going through this important transformation. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Dave forces himself through an inherently destructive rite of passage to progress into manhood; Dave is simply "[seeking] ways to take control of [his] life" (Dawahare p455).

Not only is Dave being denied the chance to become a man, he is also being denied by the oppression of his environment the ability to even understand what it means to be a man. The lack of role models has forced Dave to figure out what it means to be a man for himself. Dave feels that the older field hands who laughed at him are, essentially men. The patriarchal system is obviously based on a strict system of control and submission. Dave believes that the ownership of a tool designed to exercise control (i.e. the threat of violence) will elevate his status within the system; that is to say, he will be respected. Wright shows this with the quote, "...Could kill a man with a gun like this. Kill anybody, black or white. And if he were holding his gun in his hand, nobody could run over him; they would have to respect him". (Wright-Eight p14). Dave thinks that if he can gain the respect of his peers he will then be considered a man and he believes that the only way he can be respected is to possess a gun. When most people define what it is to be a man, they do not include the statement "owns a gun"; Dave has no conception of what it means to be a man and to have responsibilities. Living within a society dominated by Whites who assert control through force has shown Dave that the only way he can become a man is to own a tool which one uses to carry out acts of violence and prove that he has the power to control others: Dawahare put it slightly differently -- "In other words [black males in the patriarchal system] seek to compensate for their socially conditioned feelings of impotence through fantasies of omnipotence" (Dawahare p452).

Within any society that does not adhere to strict egalitarian beliefs, vestiges of inequality will almost always be present. While the United States professes a belief in equality for all men, Wright believed that there was stratification or a pyramid that placed white males on the top and black men on the bottom. In this system, black males had few chances to advance themselves and little ability to show themselves to be individuals. Wright saw that impoverished African American individuals had few alternatives other than the use of violence with which to deny the system's power over themselves. Wright believed and showed in his literature that the use of force was the simplest way for an uneducated, young, black man constrained within the patriarchal system to rail against the fate that society had placed before him.

Works Cited

Algeo, Ann M. The Courtroom as Forum: Homicide Trials by Dreiser, Wright, Capote, and Mailer. New York: Peter Lang, 1996.

Bloom, Harold. Richard Wright's Native Son. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1996.

Dawahare, Anthony. "From No Man's Land to Mother-Land: Emasculation and Nationalism in Richard Wright's Depression Era Urban Novels." African American Review. Vol 33, Number 3. Fall 1999: 451-464.

Guest, David. Sentenced to Death: The American Novel and Capital Punishment. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1997.

Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper, 1966.

Wright, Richard. Eight Men. New York: Pyramid Books, 1969.