Racial Neurosis and Death Penalty: Oedipean Fate of Bigger Thomas in Native Son
Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) is one of the most widely and critically read American and African American novels in the twentieth century, and, at the same time, the most disturbing and powerful revelatory narrative which bears witness to the ‘definitive’ predicaments of black people in a racist American society, especially of southern ghetto. The publication of Native Son gives Wright one of the rare privileges and recognitions accorded to black writer in world literature; thus, the universality of black experience in the text gives rise to a vast range of readership both outside and inside America: the problematic of racial subordination explored in the narrative transcends beyond the spatio-temporal Southern American setting—that is to say, the characters, events and actions are metonymy for the oppressed people under the shackle of western colonial-imperialist apartheid. The novel portrays the “Fear”, “Flight” and “Fate” of a poverty-ridden native black boy in the white-dominated city of Chicago, and how the trio shaped the mental well-being of Bigger as he navigates through racial barriers. In his attempt to overcome racial segregation and reassert his identity as a native son of American soil, Bigger unwittingly committed a grave crime of killing the daughter of a white billionaire estate-owner, Mary Dalton. It is against this backdrop that the analysis in this paper focuses on the courtroom argument between the white juries and the Communist lawyer (Boris Max) as they decide the fate of Bigger, and its implications for the mental well-being of the American society.
Keywords: mental well-being, racial neurosis and death penalty