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(AN ACHRGNGLGGiCAL STUDY)

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ABSTRACT

RICHARD WRIGHT'S HERO: FROM INITIATE
AND VICTIM TO REBEL AND ISOLATE
(AN ACHRONOLOGICAL STUDY)

BY

Katherine Richards Sprandel

As the number of recent critical articles and special
issues on Richard Wright can attest to, there is currently
a resurgence of interest in this black American author.
Critics have finally arrived at the point where they can
evaluate Wright's work honestly, without the emotionalism
that characterizes the earlier reviews and reSponses.

White critical paternalism, it would seem, has met a timely
death, as has the white critical backlash, which insisted,
thirty years ago, that Wright was overstating his case.

It is now possible to study Wright as an American novel-
ist, who was great not because he was black but because

he gave voice to the human fears and desires that grappled
in his soul. Undeniably, the initial impact that Wright
had on the reading public was a direct result of his being
black; and, even today, Wright is read primarily as a black
author. But Richard Wright, one discovers, speaks for all

men through his black protagonists. What emerges from a

study of Wright's autobiography and major fiction,

Katherine Richards Sprandel

therefore, is a model of the contemporary anti-hero or
rebel-victim—-the metaphor for modern man. Taken as
aspects of this prototype, Wright's heroes illustrate a
progression from victim to metaphysical rebel.

Wright's fictionalized autobiography, Black Boy

 

(1945), and his last completed novel, The Long Dream

 

(1958), document the initiation rituals that surround the
maturation of black youth in the American South. Inno-
cents victimized by a guilty society, the heroes of these
two books discover that the outcome of initiation for
them is estrangement and renunciation. By the time that
they are adults they are alienated, lonely men.

Lawd Today (written during the late thirties but

 

published posthumously in 1963) and Native Son (1940)

 

explore the consequences of this dreadful ritual. Set
in Chicago in the thirties, these two books illustrate
the lives of not-so-quiet desperation that those blacks
lead who have left the Deep South, lured by the promise
of the North. But bigotry and paternalism exist even

in Mecca. As a result, the hero of Lawd Today is frus-

 

trated and emasculated; unable to fight the system, he
compensates by drinking, fighting, and whoring. With

Native Son, however, Wright adds a startling new deve10p-

 

ment to his hero; outright rebellion. In the tradition
of other metaphysical rebels, Bigger Thomas refuses to

accept his slavery; using an accidental murder to

Katherine Richards Sprandel

free himself, he transcends his environment to create a

new self.

The Outsider (1953) continues the pattern of meta-

 

physical rebellion seen at the end of Native Son. A

 

consciously existential novel, this book examines the
depths of despair its hero encounters as he seeks the
farthestfi edges of nihilism only to discover the world's
meaninglessness and the bitter truth that men have need

of one another. These same truths burn into the soul of
Fred Daniels, the hero of "The Man Who Lived Underground"
(1944), who attempts to preach this new gOSpel of brother-
hood to a world gone mad. Predictably, he is scorned

and, like so many of Wright's heroes, dies a violent

death at the hands of his enemy.

To more fully appreciate Wright's extreme ori-
ginality within traditional literary forms and themes,
it is useful to study Wright's hero in his relationship
to naturalism, Marxism, existentialism, and Freudianism.
Toward this end, this study draws on the insights of
such disciplines as psychology, philosophy, sociology,
and archetypal criticism.

When Wright began publishing, he broke with the
tradition of writing what the white public wanted to read,
thus opening new territory to authors like James Baldwin
and William Melvin Kelley. Today Wright's fiction is
still revolutionary; it challenges us to look deeply into

the human condition and question its meaning.

RICHARD WRIGHT'S HERO: FROM INITIATE
AND VICTIM TO REBEL AND ISOLATE

(AN ACHRONOLOGICAL STUDY)

BY

Katherine Richards Sprandel

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Department of English

1973

£9

3;???

“a,
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v
a.

(.1
‘4’

COPYRIGHT BY
Katherine Richards Sprandel

1973

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my Chairman, Professor Joseph J. Waldmeir,
for knowing when to ask questions and when to offer
support.

To my committee members, Professors Barry Gross
and Linda C. Wagner, for their time and suggestions.

To the following men who have contributed more
than they know: Professors E. Fred Carlisle, C. David
Mead, James H. Pickering, and John A. Yunck.

To Dennis, my husband, because he loves me.

ii

Chapter
I.

II.

III.

IV.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

 

 

 

Page
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . 1
THE INITIATE AND THE VICTIM (Black Boy;
The Long Dream) . . . . . . . . . . 9
gHE)VICTIM AND THE REBEL (Lawd Today; Native 82
on . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

THE REBEL AND THE ISOLATE (The Outsider; "The
Man Who Lived Underground") . . . . . . 166

 

CONCLUSION (Wright's Point of View; The
Mega-hero) . . . . . . . . . . . . 254

iii

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

In studying a man's fiction, it is always possible
'to take many critical routes, especially when that man has
been as controversial a figure as Richard Wright. Thus,
Edward Margolies (The Art of Richard Wright, 1969), after
first discussing Wright's non-fiction, studies Wright's
fiction more or less chronologically. Keneth Kinnamon, in
his recently published book (The Emergence of Richard Wright:
A Study in Literature and Society, 1972), primarily examines
Wright's environment and literary achievements through the

publication of Native Son in 1940. In contrast, Dan McCall

 

(The Example of Richard Wright, 1969) and Russell C.
Brignano (Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Man and
the Man and His Works, 1970) have preferred not to divide
their analyses into separate discussions of each work, but
have attempted instead to bring Wright's thinking together
under various topics.

And Wright's fiction certainly lends itself to such
an analysis since several recurring themes and topics help
to unify his work. For example, his interest in and use

of Marxism (especially in his condemnation of the white

capitalistic society); the theme of the black man's es-
sential alienation and invisibility in this white country;
the concomitant theme of living in an unreal or nightmare
world as a black man; the plea for brotherhood and the
bitter protest against a society determined to make slaves
of other men; the refusal of black men to accept the identi-
ties fixed for them by whites--the tacit acknowledgement,
therefore, that all men are ontologically free to create
themselves (the rumblings of existentialism appear in
Wright's early works even before he knew of its existence

as a philosophical school; The Outsider is Wright's attempt

 

to write a consciously existential novel). And, of course,
the frustrations, fears, and dangers involved in being a
black man in America are always part of the fabric of
Wright's fiction.

Because of the thematic unity of Wright's work one
can discover a definite pattern in his fiction, specifically
in the development of his hero--the method I take in this
study. But rather than tracing its development in real time,

which takes us in a circle (back to The Long Dream, Wright's

 

fictional account of Southern childhood), I will study the
hero in fictional time. That is, by rearranging the order
in which Wright's books were written, it is possible to use
Wright's last completed novel to help explain his first one.
This journey takes us roughly from the story of an innocent

victim to that of a metaphysical rebel. In this discussion,

then, each book prepares us for the next by filling in the
background information only hinted at in its successor.
Thus Black Boy (1945) and The Long Dream (1958) help to

explain the truncated lives of the heroes in Lawd Today

 

(published in 1963 but written sometime before 1940) and
Native Son (1940); these two books of latent and open
rebellion, in turn, shed light on the existentialism of
The Outsider (1953) and "The Man Who Lived Underground"
(1944).

Thus for our purposes we begin with Wright's fiction-

alized autobiography, Black Boy, whose hero, the young

 

Richard Wright, suffers the same frustrations and fears
as the men he will later create in his novels and short

stories. Black Boy reveals how paternalism works: through

 

public coercion and vicious brutality, the whites struggle
to maintain their racial and social superiority. And, as
Wright tells it, the blacks help them by fatalistically
accepting their inferior status in the community. But in
the young Wright we see the seeds of his heroes' rebellions,
for he absolutely will not allow either blacks or whites

to form a pre-conceived identity for him. His story is a
violent one with few sympathetic characters other than
Wright himself; it is man against society.

Wright's last novel, the Long Dream, recapitulates

 

Black Boy, since its hero, Fishbelly Tucker, is a child

 

living in the Deep South of Mississippi. In this book

Wright again presents the constant, insidious dangers of
growing up black in America. Fish's initiation ritual
comprises the bulk of the novel as he is continually con-
fronted with his special status as a black male (the book
illustrates Southern sexual mores in scenes of dread and
stark reality). By the end of the book, its hero, only
eighteen years old, has experienced enough terror to drive
him out of the country to save his life and his soul. Fish
is the initiate rejected by society, the innocent victimized
by a racist society.

Whereas Black Boy and The Long Dream offer Wright's

 

 

conceptions of the initiation of black men in America, Lawd
Egdaz.and Native Son illuminate the consequences of this
dreadful ritual.

Born in the South, Jake Jackson (Lawd Today) has
emigrated north and is living in a large industrial city
(Chicago), employed as a postal worker. Heir to the victim—
ization experienced by his younger counterpart, Fish Tucker,
Jake exemplifies the dissatisfied but helpless black man,
technically free but in reality slave to American prejudice
and the American economic system. Jake has fled the South
of overt bigotry to a more subtle and equally dangerous
covert paternalism. In this atmosphere he leads a truncated,
albeit colorful, life, separated from the Great American
Dream by virtue of his race. Although Jake is unhappy, he
is too busy compensating for his emasculation to really

rebel. He confines his rebellion to self-pity and brawls.

Another young man, just as frozen in place and

restless, is the fourth hero, Bigger Thomas (Native Son),

 

also a transplanted Southerner. Living in Chicago with
his mother and two siblings, Bigger adds another dimension
to Wright's hero: outright rebellion. Victimized and
despised like the men preceding him, Bigger Thomas takes
a more significant step than fleeing or fighting-~he mur-
ders, using the deed to win his metaphysical freedom.
Alienated from the rest of the world, Bigger is also
alienated from himself throughout most of the book. By
the story's end, however, Bigger has resolved his self-
alienation by existentially creating a new identity for
himself.

The existentialism evident here is just a preview

of that in The Outsider, whose hero, Cross Damon (probably

 

the most complicated of Wright's heroes) takes up the burden
of complete freedom. Taking advantage of a fluke accident
to create a new personality for himself, Cross Damon be-
comes the epitome of the metaphysical rebel gone bad.
Enchanted by nihilism, Cross comes to believe that in his
protest against the world's injustices he can do as he
pleases--even replace God. As a result, he thoroughly
isolates himself from other men, in whose name he had sup-
posedly been rebelling.

The final hero, Fred Daniels ("The Man Who Lived

Underground"), draws all the others together under his

mantle of love and brotherhood. A black outcast, victimized
like the rest because of his color, Fred becomes representa-
tive of all men. Forced to discover himself and the meaning
of life in a city's sewers, Fred concludes that all men are
alone, trapped in a meaningless world, and that they must
therefore stick together if they are to find any meaning in
life at all.

What we see in these six heroes, then, is the develop-
ment of a metaphysical rebel turned prophet. None of the
men accepts his condition; all in one form or another, with
varying degrees of success, attempt to create a self for
themselves in an otherwise fluid society which is preversely
determined to fix their identities for them. Because they
are black they have a tougher time of it than other men, but
they are undoubtedly representative of modern man in search
of himself. These men may be victims, but they are not
passive. The young Wright struggles valiantly to preserve
his integrity. Fish fights a losing battle, taking on the
entire Southern social structure. Jake madly compensates,
falling victim to the same vanity as Fish, but always,
always complaining. Bigger thrashes out through bloodshed.
Cross murders repeatedly to protect his dearest possession,
his complete freedom. And Fred, seeing all this pointless
violence and cruelty that men wreak upon themselves, emerges

from the heart of the world to plea for brotherhood.

Wright's archetypal hero is the rebel-victim who cries out
for immediate universal justice, much like Ivan Karamazov.

Many sources are helpful in a study of Wright's hero.
Not the least are his own experiences, expressed not only
in Black Bgy but also in his speeches and essays, since much
of what he fictionalized he had earlier suffered himself.
Other sources, useful in understanding Wright's thinking,
are the works of such people as Charles C. Walcutt, Walter
B. Rideout, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ihab Hassan,
Karen Horney, Northrup Frye, and Wayne C. Booth.

Because of Wright's early association with the
Communist Party during the time when he was learning his
craft, Wright's fiction was always marked by the influence
of the proletarian school of writing. These authors (like
Jack Conroy and Henry Roth) drew extensively on the tech-
niques used by the literary naturalists like Stephen Crane
and Frank Norris. Charles Walcutt's American Literary
Naturalism: A Divided Stream clarifies the philosophy and
the method of these men. Walter B. Rideout's The Radical
Novel in the United States, 1900-1954 helps define just
what proletarian writing is.

Wright was also strongly affected by his association
with existentialism. For the best explanations of his
thinking along these lines, we can turn to Albert Camus'

The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, and Caligula. Jean-Paul

 

 

 

Sartre's fiction and philosophy further elucidate Wright's

existential backbround, works such as Being and NOthingness,

The Age of Reason, Nausea, and The Flies. For a critical

 

approach to Wright's philosophical premises, Ihab Hassan's
Radical Innocence: The Contemporary_American Novel is
probably the best source, especially his first two chapters
in which he discusses the rebel-victim in fiction. Although
Hassan does not discuss Wright, his insights into the
characteristics of contemporary fiction have done much to
reveal the qualities of Wright's heroes as radical innocents.

As a study of human behavior, Karen Horney's Neurosis

 

and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization
offers the probable psychological motivations of Wright's
heroes.

For general critical approaches, Northrup Frye's

Anatomy of Criticism and Wayne Booth's The Rhetoric of

 

 

Fiction were most useful. Frye's influence permeates the
entire discussion with his definitions of ironic tragedy,
myth, ritual, and archetypal criticism. Wayne Booth's
astute observations about narrative technique help explain
Wright's methods of effecting an emotional impact on the

reader.

CHAPTER II

THE VICTIM AND THE REBEL

Richard Wright knew from personal experience what
it was like to be both poor and black at the turn of the
century. Born in 1908 in Natchez, Mississippi,1 of desti-
tute parents, Wright had an unhappy childhood. His mother,
Ella Wright, was a schoolteacher who had trouble finding
work; his father, Nathaniel Wright, was a sharecropper who
deserted his young family, leaving behind an embittered
son. Wright never forgot nor forgave his father. Nor did
he show more charity toward the whites, whose despotic
caste system nearly destroyed him. Furthermore, Wright
had little patience for those blacks who kow-towed to the
whites; as a result of his early experiences, he remained
critical all his life of those blacks who participated in
their own degradation.

Wright's account of his youth and adolescence appears

in his fictionalized autobiography, Black Boy. In this book

 

Wright blends his own personal history with the universal
experiences of his race in a conscious attempt to portray
himself as a symbol of the black lower class (in doing this,
according to Constance Webb, he omitted many details that

would have shown his situation as actually much more

9

lo

tolerable than that of the poverty—stricken blacks he was
trying to represent).2 When Wright borrows from the legends
handed down by generations of slaves, he tells the stories
as though they truly happened to him personally. The best
known example is the traditional folktale of the preacher
who comes to dinner and eats all the fried chicken; ac—

cording to Black Boy it happened to the young Wright--it

 

wasn't just a favorite story. Another event that Wright
heard about and told as though it were part of his own
history is the anecdote of his uncle driving him into the
middle of the Mississippi River. According to Webb, this
to was told to Wright by Ralph Ellison.3

On the other hand, Wright often deplores the tradi-

tions of his race in Black Boy, ignoring its positive

 

values, and making a concerted effort to remove himself
from its confines. These ambivalent feelings toward
blacks haunt him in all his fiction. While he perhaps
subconsciously continued to exploit black folklore, he
intentionally attacked and rejected the blacks' way of
surviving, condemning them for aiding the white man in
his emasculation of the black man. Ironically, Wright
was employing the fruits of the black man's oppression--
his folklore and traditions-—as he was chastizing the very
behavior that invented these marvelous tales. Wright
obviously was a complex man, struggling to come to terms

with his heritage, his environment, and himself. These

11

conflicts created fascinating fiction, chronicles of the
twentieth century black man seeking identity and a place
in the world. What Wright reveals is often frightening,
but it is never dull. For whenever we study an abreactive
author, as Wright seems to have been, we are eXploring the
recesses of the human mind. Many inconsistencies appear
there, but they challenge us to read more in hopes of
grasping the real man.

Many of the themes that Wright would return to time

and again appear in Black Boy. His fiction and nonfiction

 

seem to have supported each other. Whereas Black Boy is

 

autobiography laced with fiction, Wright's novels and short
stories are primarily fiction with obvious borrowings from
his own experiences. All his work, therefore, has a certain
unity about it that discloses a sensitive and serious man

living in an uncertain age. Like his fiction, Black Boy

 

contains the themes of social and self-alienation; it is

the poignant tale of a young boy searching for his identity.
In Wright's later fiction, the boy will become a criminal,
but the metamorphosis illustrates Wright's expanded vision
when an innocent boy and a killer share the same agony of
not knowing who they are. The young Richard Wright, like
all his later heroes, must wrench his identity from a
hostile environment; neither Wright nor his heroes have

the comfort of being accepted by their own race. All are

aliens among both the whites and the blacks. A major

12

difference between Black Boy and the fiction is that, although

 

several stories are Bildungsromans, none are Kunstlerromans

 

except the autobiography since it alone focuses on a
budding artist. The other heroes are either lower class
or petty bourgeois failures. Wright's proletarian vision
prevented him, one supposes, from choosing artists as
protagonists in anything other than his autobiography.4
Although Black Boy's story is one of fear and
cruelty, Wright infuses these memories with a certain
nostalgia by his almost poetic descriptions of his yearn-
ings for identification with the rest of the world. It
is through the magic and beauty of words that Wright grows
to love the world and becomes enchanted with its possibili-
ties. His first eXperience with the magic of words was the
tale of "Bluebeard and His Seven Wives," whispered to him
by the young schoolteacher boarding with his family. His
fascination with words is amplified when he is punished
for an obscene remark he innocently makes to his devil-
fearing grandmother. Granny's extreme reaction and her
accusation that Blla's novels have corrupted him mystify
Richard who vows to conquer the power of words. From this
moment, the elder Wright recalls, his perception of men
and nature became drastically altered. To eXpress this
change in himself Wright lists the wonders of nature, using
Whitman to help him illustrate his urge to absorb the world
and all its marvelous offerings. The feelings seem nearly

to overwhelm him as he remembers that

13

There was the drenching hospitality in the pervading
smell of sweet magnolias.

There was the aura of limitless freedom distilled
from the rolling sweep of tall green grass swaying and
glinting in the wind and sun.

There was the feeling of impersonal plenty when I
saw a boll of cotton whose cup had spilt over and
straggled its white fleece toward the earth.5

The young Wright's next eXperience with literary

urgings is the excitement he gleans from reading stories

in the magazine supplement of a paper he sells, specifically
Zane Grey's Riders of the Purple Sage, whose very title
entrances the imaginative child. But this particular paper,
Wright discovers to his shame, is a mouthpiece of the Ku
Klux Klan. And so he is forced to give up yet another
source of reading material since Granny had already driven
out the schoolteacher and her novels. Resourcefully, he
turns to second-hand magazines to feed his growing desire
for life outside the rural south.

At length he tries to write a story himself. He

calls it "The Voodoo of Hell's Half-Acre," saying of it

years later in his autobiography,

It was crudely atmospheric, emotional, intuitively
psychological, and stemmed from pure feeling (144).

A local paper, The Southern Register, printed it; however,

 

no extant copies have ever been found.

( Later, in Memphis, Wright awakens to the ideas of
H. L. Mencken and Theodore Dreiser. Through their influence
he recognizes that he must leave the South in order to

realize his potential. Since his environment has not given

14

him any reason to believe in himself, he later concludes
that books have been his mainstay. And although he leaves
Memphis with little hope and no plans, he is convinced that
staying would be suicidal, "either because of possible
violence to others against me, or because of my possible
violence against them" (226). After moving to Chicago,
Wright learned to fight with words instead of guns and
fists.

Whereas Wright emerged successfully from his initi-
ation rituals, his heroes do not. For initiation does not
necessarily guarantee social acceptance, especially in
America. Here it has a peculiar outcome--that of victim-
ization and renunciation-~as Ihab Hassan has discovered:

Our concern is the encounter between the self and

the world in fiction, that confrontation of the 'hero'
with experience which may assume the form of initiation
or victimization. Now initiation may be understood as
a process leading through right action and consecrated
knowledge to a viable mode of life in the world. Its
end is confirmation. The result of victimization, how-
ever, is renunciation. Its characteristic mode is

estrangement from the world, and its values are chiefly
inward and transcendental.b

 

 

Hassan also remarks that in anti-utopia there is only victim-

ization; and that the Naturalistic mode of initiation (rele-

 

vant to Native Son) is one where the hero submits to the

forces of society and nature.7

Out of victimization, the dark side of initiation,

arises the rebel-victim, the outraged hero "on trial for
8

nothing less than his being,‘ as Hassan sees him. The

paradigm of the innocent hero victimized by a guilty society

15

is the black man in America. For, traditionally, a black
youth's initiation has ended in renunciation: the white
majority society rejects him and he in turn isolates himself
from the rest of the world, for all practical purposes
recognizing and accepting his inferiority. Deep within,
however, stirs the wrath of a violated man.
The estrangement mentioned by Hassan is evident in

Black Boy. Wright is not only alienated from the dominant
white society but also from his own race since he abhors
the concept of accommodation which they embrace--albeit
unwillingly. Afraid of disturbing the delicate equilibrium
between the two races, the blacks complicate each other's
socialization and individuation processes by pressuring
their own to maintain the status quo, to play the role
demanded of them by whites. Edward Bland calls blacks in
this predicament pre-individualistic. And Ralph Ellison,
basing his statements on Bland's theory, argues that this
pre-individual state is induced artifically by blacks in
order to

impress the Negro child with the omniscience and

omnipotence of the whites to the point that whites

appear as ahuman as Jehovah, and as relentless as

a Mississippi flood. Socially it is effected through

an elaborate scheme of taboos supported by a ruthless

physical violence, which strikes not only the offender

but the entire black community. To wander from the

paths of behavior laid down for the group is to

become the agent of communal disaster.9

As a result of living in constant fear and tension, the

blacks themselves enforce obedience to the code of behavior

16

drawn up by the whites. A black rebel lives briefly, often
bringing disaster down upon his own community before his
death can be consummated by irate whites. Therefore, as a
measure of self-defense, the blacks teach their children
"The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." In an abbreviated version

of his autobiography given this name, and in Black Boy,

 

Wright recalls the advice other blacks offered him as help-
ful suggestions for staying alive in a hostile environment.
Knowing that the only way to stay alive was to stay in line,
Wright's friends warn him to think before he speaks to
whites, a lesson that comes hard to the independently-minded
young man. George Kent has said that Wright's major

strategy in Black Boy was to portray the tension springing

 

from the conflict between a black outsider and his group's
protective reactionary tactics, for even as a child Wright
rebelled against having his individuality suppressed in
order "to protect the group from whiteassault."lo This
resoluteness on the part of the self to exist in the face
of almost insurmountable destructive forces creates in
Wright's and the reader's mind some fragile hope for the
disinherited man.

All his life, Richard Wright refused to comply with
the whites' eXpectations of him; he rebelled intellectually

and managed, after moving to France, to lead a fairly

normal, rewarding life. Black Boy recounts Wright's early

 

initiation, his struggles with himself, his black neighbors,

17

his frightened, highly religious family, and--most im-
portantly-~his struggle with the white world. The "har-
rowing perspective" of his black viewpoint reveals to Robert
Bone what he calls Wright's major literary theme, that is,
that the entire society is mobilized to keep the Negro
in his place: to restrict his freedom of movement,
discourage his ambition, and banish him forever to
the nether regions of subordination and inferiority.
This attempt to mark off in advance the boYEdaries
of human life is Wright s essential theme.
In Wright's case, the whites' attempt fails; he transcends
his situation and environment to become a prominent inter-
national literary figure. But Wright remained obsessed
with the number of victories chalked up by the white com-
munity, and, therefore, spent the rest of his life renouncing
a society that left individuals unfulfilled and isolated
from human compassion and companionship.

Early in his life Wright himself had experienced a
desire for brotherhood, a "yearning for identification"
which was loosed in him "by the sight of a solitary ant
carrying a burden upon a mysterious journey" (7). But
because of constant hunger and loneliness, Wright says,
he eventually grew to "distrust everything and everybody"
(26). His father deserted the family, and his mother was
forced to leave Richard temporarily with a woman whose
ugly face and foul breath repelled the young boy. Wright

is shuttled from one relative to the next because the

family is so poor. And, thus, he slowly but inevitably

18

becomes alienated from his own people, remarking later in
his autobiography, to the shock of many blacks, that he

used to ponder

the strange absence of real kindness in Negroes, how
unstable was our tenderness, how lacking in genuine
passion we were, how void of great hope, how timid
our joy, how bare our traditions, how hollow our
memories, how lacking we were in those intangible
sentiments that bind man to man, and how shallow

was even our despair (33).

This bleak outlook is reflected fictionally in Native‘Son

 

where Wright paints a depressing picture of impoverished
blacks. There is no affection in Bigger's family, only
bitterness and quarreling. But Wright, speaking through
Bigger, clings to his belief that these hardened outcasts
still long for a chance to belong, to feel at home with
other men and the world.

In addition to his feeling of loneliness among other
blacks, Wright had also experienced dread of whites by the
time he was ten years old, as he recalls,

I had already grown to feel that there existed men
against whom I was powerless, men who could violate
my life at will (65).
Although he had never been personally abused by whites at
this age, he nonetheless knew their capacity for hateful
acts. And when the brother of a friend of his is murdered,
it affects him deeply.
The things that influenced my conduct as a Negro did
not have to happen to me directly; I needed but to
hear of them to feel their full effects in the deepest
layers of my consciousness . . . , creating a sense

of distance between me and the world in which I
lived (150f).

19

Whereas Wright says he condemns the blacks for lacking
traditions and kindness, he nevertheless empathizes thor-
oughly with the experiences of his race, blaming instead
the whites for the Negroes' shortcomings since they have
refused his peOple the full benefits of Western culture.
Wright identifies with the most debased of blacks; his
novels give them strong voices to protest against their

condition. Thus Native Son is told entirely from the

 

viewpoint of Bigger Thomas, the narrator; we never know
what is in the minds of the other characters. In limiting
himself to Bigger's perspective, Wright is asking the
reader to identify with his hero and to try to understand
his motives and actions. This talent for making the reader
identify with his heroes is one of Wright's most impressive
accomplishments as a novelist.12

In order for us to more thoroughly understand the
reasons for Bigger's attitude, however, it is helpful to

first study the last novel that Wright wrote, The Long

 

PEEEE.(1958)- Based to a great extent on Wright's own
childhood, this book fictionally presents the initiation
rituals of a black boy in Mississippi. It is the story

of the estrangement of Fishbelly Tucker from his own black
race and from the majority white society of Clintonville,

Mississippi. In this regard, The Long Dream has many points

 

of intersection with Black Boy; both, for example, illus-

 

trate the victimization of black men in America. Moreover,

20

because Bigger Thomas was a product of the South before
the slums of Chicago had their chance to destroy him, his
background must have been comparable both to Wright's and
to Fish's, for repression in the South has been not only

a matter of class but also a matter of race.

Although The Long Dream has been available for study

 

for more than a decade, it has received very little critical
attention. Moreover, those critics who have discussed it
tend to linger overlong on its flaws, virtually ignoring

any strengths or significance it might have.13 Probably

the most devastating comment appears as a footnote in The_

Negro Novel in America in which Robert Bone calls it "a
14

 

still more disastrous performance" than The Outsider.

 

Granville Hicks' 1958 review is also quite caustic as he
scorns Wright's craft, especially his ability in character-
ization. Strangely enough, Hicks entitled his article

"The 39323 of Richard Wright" (italics mine), mentioning
this "power" only as an afterthought as he concludes his
piece. There he claims that Wright, "alienated from reality"
as he is, still has the capacity "to touch both the emotions

and the consciences of his readers."15

Saunders Redding is
also content to attack, counterpointing every compliment
with a condition. Conceding in praise that Wright's tone

is ironic, he complains that its effect is "flattened by

too much iteration." Acknowledging that Wright's theme is

21

valid, he insists that Wright doesn't know when to stop
and that he fails to convince readers that this "lamentable,
tragic manhood . . . is the only kind of manhood possible

for a Negro in the South."16

Such critical arrogance
seems uncalled for, especially when one considers what

Wright was trying to do in The Long Dream. It seems

 

apparent to one who has read all of Wright's fiction that
he was tracing the sources of isolation and alienation in
black men in this his last finished novel. For the book
is unquestionably a thorough account of what it was like
to grow up in the Deep South as a Negro male. It is

therefore an invaluable prelude to a study of Native Son

 

and The Outsider. It is, like many of Wright's other

 

stories, a tragedy in the ironic mode, and it has the fur-
ther advantages of being very carefully laid in archetypal
patterns. As irony in its late phase where it returns to
myth, it presents "the world of the nightmare and the
scapegoat, of bondage and pain and confusion."17

And so perhaps it is up to the more recent critics,
less emotionally involved, to more accurately assess the
qualities of Wright's final work. For it is a book, like
most, comprised of strengths and weaknesses. It is a
protest novel: strong in its condemnation of racism and
yet strangely weak in its effect. For example, because

the plot is episodic, its amplitude of details tends to

crush the reader into apathy instead of exciting him to

22

anger. Wright's protest seems to feed on the wealth of
horrors that surround Fish's life, but the reader is more
stunned than outraged. Furthermore, the book's ending is
certainly too hastily handled after such exhaustive search-
ings into Fish's psyche; ultimately, the novel resolves
nothing.

On the positive side, however, Wright has finally
given us the story that helps explain the conditions and
motivations of his earlier heroes. With this fuller
perspective we can study Bigger Thomas, Cross Damon, and

Fred Daniels with greater reward. For it is in The Long

 

Dream_that Wright gives us the whole sordid story of a
young black growing into manhood, and he spares us no
details. In this respect he is much more thorough than

in his autobiography-~there he omitted references to sexual

maturation.18

Here he dwells frequently on the sexual
problems implicit in a racist society. In fact, Wright

seems to propose in The Long Dream that sex is the primary

 

cause of racial tension, for Fish's agony and alienation
are both intimately related to sex. His ritual of initi-
ation is always sexually oriented. Finally, we are left
with the disturbing knowledge of what it is like to be
young and black in America.

Several contemporary scholars have begun to recognize

Wright's accomplishment in The Long Dream. Russell Brignano

 

for one admires the "ironies in dialogue and action and the

23

inclusion of mirrored episodes" in this novel.19 And most

critics agree with Edward Margolies that Wright has created

a "remarkable portrait" in Fish's father, Tyree Tucker.20

Margolies further maintains that the book is more authentic
than Wright's other work, since it does not suffer from

metaphysical or political debates.21

Instead of using
philosophy to give intellectual depth to his book, Wright

uses symbolism.

Carefully documented from Wright's own experiences,22

The Long Dream is a ritualized account of a black boy's

 

initiation into the two conflicting worlds of the blacks

and the whites, a ceremony that members of both races
participate in. Indeed, a major portion of character
development, or more accurately character malformation,

is effected by the blacks on their own kind. To insure
their youths' safety, the black community abets the emasculative
process begun by whites when slavery began here centuries
ago. But just as surely as black parents act to destroy,
they act to save. As John Williams points out in his
introduction to Sissie, blacks "love their children as much
as any others. . . . But because they are black the parental

23

burden is greater." When Wright censures his own peOple

he is only too aware, as he points out in Black Bgy, that

 

they have been excluded from the benefits of Western culture
and its traditions. How black parents react may be deplora-
ble, but it is certainly understandable, at times even

necessary for the survival of their children.

24

Divided into three parts, the novel covers the life
of Rex (Fishbelly) Tucker from pre-school years to his
eighteenth birthday, a span of time sufficient for a
southern black man's complete maturation, i.e., time to
wake into the world's nightmare of reality.

In order to fully appreciate the scope of Wright's
accomplishment in The Long Dream, it is necessary to examine
the book from an archetypal perspective. As Northrup Frye
says in his essay on symbols, "From such a point of view,
the narrative aspect of literature is a recurrent act of
symbolic communication: in other words a ritual. . . .
Simularly, in archetypal criticism the significant content
is the conflict of desire and reality which has for its

"24 Because both the form and

basis the work of the dream.
the content contain aspects of recurrence and the "dialectic
of desire and repugnance," they reinforce one another.

Their union in literature Frye calls "myth": "the identi-
fication of ritual and dream, in which the former is seen

to be the latter in movement."25 Thus ritual is mythos or

plot and dream is dianoia or thought. The Long Dream is a

 

paradigm of this happy symbiosis where the form and content
complement one another almost to perfection. Although the
book is not terribly exciting to read, it does seem to be
technically a minor Egg; dgpfgggg,

The controlling image of the book is the dream, as

eXpressed not only in its title but also in its epigraphs,

25

Fish's dreams themselves, comments made by his father, and
in its section headings: "Daydreams and Nightdreams,"
"Days and Nights," and "Waking Dream." These section titles
illustrate another aspect of the book's theme, the tension
between desire and reality. Complementing the dream motif
are the ritualistic implications of Fish's initiation and
his eventual expulsion from society.

In his chapter in Radical Innocence called "The
Dialectic of Initiation," Hassan defines the ideal purpose
of initiation, saying that

Initiation can be understood . . . as the first
existential ordeal, crisis, or encounter with
experience in the life of a youth. Its ideal aim
is knowledge, recognition, and confirmation in the
world, to which the actions of the initiate, how-
ever painful, must tend. It is, quite simply, the
viable mode of confronting adult realities.2
Recognizing its basically dialectic nature, he observes
that "Initiation takes the classic pattern of withdrawal
and return; its context is the conflict between social
and instinctive behavior, ideal choice and biological

necessity."27

But after studying nineteenth and twentieth
century American fiction, Hassan concludes that initiation
has backfired for American heroes. Although the end of
initiation should be confirmation, this has seldom been
the case for the American adolescent. Instead, rejection
has been the pattern:

Sacrifice, regression, defeat-~these summed up the

recurrent eXpense of initiation. The face of the

initiate in modern America began early to shade into
the face of the victim . . . still rebellious and

26
still outraged. Initiation did not end with communion;
it led to estrangement.28
The dialectic of initiation as eXpressed in the

conflict between desire and reality in The Long Dream is

 

the same dialectic that Camus has identified as the condi-
tion of the absurd. Since Fish is forced to encounter and
live with this tension he becomes, like the other Wright
heroes, an absurd hero, a man in quest of meaning and
identity. Where this search takes him is the content of

The Long Dream. Its narrative pattern is the ritual of

 

initiation: Fish is undergoing the same rituals that
generations of black youth before him have eXperienced.
And so, as Frye suggests it should, two patterns

emerge from an archetypal study of The Long Dream: one

 

is cyclical, the other is dialectic. Through his presen-
tation of Fish's maturation, Wright continually signifies
that a ritual is taking place; to support the larger ritual
of growing up, he has included several minor ones, such as
Chris' ritual murder, the ritual of sexual initiation, and
the ritual of death as exemplified in Tyree Tucker, the
undertaker. As Frye further notes, "We have rituals of
social integration, and we have rituals of eXpulsion,
execution, and punishment." Thus even the ritual whose
main feature is its recurrence has aspects of conflict

in it. Moreover, the dream, whose major feature is a

parallel dialectic, as there is both the wish-fulfillment

27

dream and the anxiety or nightmare dream of repugnance,"
also contains the element of recurrence, the daily cycle
of waking and sleeping-—the reappearance of the day's
activities in dream form.29

Perhaps the single most impressive ritual that Fish
witnesses is that in which Chris Sims is murdered and
castrated for having a white mistress. Although this
ritual of punishment and execution is indigenous to black
American culture, it is often ignored or denied by the
whites-—its very perpetrators. It appears, moreover, in

such "white" literature as William Fulkner's Light in

 

August and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The general

 

pattern is this: a white woman is attracted sexually to a
black man who either: (1) denies her advances and is
accused of rape by the outraged rejected woman, or (2)
succumbs to her attraction and is accused of rape by
either the woman when she tires of him or the general
public who refuses to believe that a white woman could
actually desire a black man. In the end, the black man

is killed and often castrated.

In The Long Dream Chris Sims, a black bellhop at a

 

local hotel, is more or less seduced by a white prostitute
who lives there. When she becomes bored by him she turns
him in, not only to get rid of him but to rid herself of
guilt. The townspeople, enraged that one of their lily-

white women has been violated by this black beast, set

28

out on a man-hunt to track down and destroy this dangerous
creature. Once they have captured Chris they torture and
mutilate him until no semblance of the human remains.

At the height of the man-hunt, Tyree rushes franti—
cally to school to pick up his son, whose safety he fears
for. Although Chris had been a well-liked young man, Tyree
overcomes any emotional involvement he might have had with
the youth in order to convert his experience into an
object lesson for Fish. He shouts at his puzzled son,
"'NEVER LOOK AT A WHITE WOMAN! YOU HEAR?"'30 Fish, com-
pletely baffled by his father's bizarre behavior, is never-
theless convinced that he is witnessing an important event
since his intuition tells him that he is watching his own
initiation drama unfold. Fish is warned to avoid white
women for his own safety. And so, to save his son's life,
the father reinforces the whites' teaching that black men
have no right to white women. But, because the information
is couched in less than frank language, Fish is more
perplexed than educated by the shouted admonitions not
to look at white women. "The notion of 'looking' at a
white woman seemed so farfetched as to be funny, but he
feared the fear that was now showing on his father's
shadowy face" (60). His mother symbolically hugs him
in a gesture "taking leave of his childhood, of his in-
nocence" (60). While Chris is being beaten to death across

town, Fish is learning the cold facts of black adult life.

29

Not only is Fish being instructed in how to act
toward white women, but he is discovering for himself the
other side of his parents' self-assured manner, that is,
their absolute fear of whites. When he sees his mother's
face "bloated with fear" he is repelled, unwilling to
accept her as the mother he has known:

Were these scared and trembling people his parents?

He was more afraid of them than he was of the white

people. Suddenly he saw his parents as he felt and

thought that the white people saw them and he felt

toward them some of the contempt that the white

people felt for them (58).
After his father has screamed at him, "'They outnumber us
ten to one! . . . TEN TO ONE: YOU HEAR?'" (60), he hears
his father say, "'Be a man, son, no matter what happens'"
(61). But Fish cannot swallow this advice that so obviously
conflicts with how his father is behaving; furthermore, his
father's abject fear shames him.

Having never before been confronted with "this
business of white people" (62), Fish is filled with anxiety.
He cannot understand why no one has ever discussed the
problem before, neither at school nor in church. He feels
betrayed, isolated, lost. And once again in a pattern
that will remain with him all his life, he sees blacks
through white eyes and "what he saw evoked in him a sense
of distance between him and his people that baffled and

worried him" (62). From this vantage point he deduces

that the white world is the real one, that the blacks lead

.4

.7.

'.
bu

 

in

It

:-

J-

 

30

non-lives. How blacks arrived at this negative state he
cannot determine, but Fish realizes that cringing in fear
is not a solution to the problem. Thus, even before the
ritual is complete, Fish has recognized his own alienation
from the rest of the blacks.

Secluded in the bathroom to mull over Tyree's strange
advice not to "look white," Fish discovers in an old paper
a photo of a scantily clad white woman, which he tears out
and places in his pocket for further reference. Unable to
come to grips with this new outlook on life, he hopes the
picture will help him solve the mystery of white women.

He is intrigued by the fact that black men die because

of white women-~espeCially because the woman in the picture
doesn't look at all dangerous. And Tyree's warning, "'When
you in the presence of a white woman, remember she means
dgagh'" (60), has only increased Fish's fascinated pre-
occupation with the type. So far, the lesson is backfiring
on Tyree.

The ritual continues when Chris' body is found in a
ditch. Tyree's reaction to this discovery is a nervous
relief: "'They killed im,'" he says. "'And I'm glad:'"
He's glad because he sees Chris as the sacrificial animal
on the whites' altar: "'We can live only if we give a
little of our lives to the white folks'" (65). But this
pragmatic attitude toward life takes its toll in mental

anguish, and Tyree is no exception. He hates the whites

31

for demanding viCtims and the blacks for yielding them-—
even though he knows it's necessary. Fish can appreciate
the pangs his father feels in supplying the blood guaranty
and so is not surprised to hear him say reverently, "'Chris
died for us'" (66). Chris' (or Christ's, as Wright has
made rather explicit) death buys every black man a little
more time to live. Chris is innocent of the crime of

rape but is brutally and incongruously murdered; he, like

Christ, is the archetypal scapegoat, the pharmakos "who

 

has to be killed to strengthen the others" and whose

31

punishment far exceeds his crime. Interestingly enough,

Faulkner's sacrificial victim in Light in August also has

 

a name closely akin to Christ, i.e., Joe Christmas. And
he too, like Chris Sims, is mutilated at death by actual
physical castration.

Intent on digging every possible lesson for Fish out
of this horror show, Tyree takes his son with him to watch
the autopsy. In a scene calculated to remind the reader
of the soldiers' haggling over Christ's clothes, Tyree and
Old Man White argue over the body fee; the body snatcher
finally getting paid ten dollars for the mangled corpse.
What follows in grisly detail is the autopsy itself, during
which Fish observes that "not only had the whites taken
Chris' life, but they had robbed him of the semblance of
the human" (70).32 By destroying Chris' body and castrating

him, the whites have avenged the white girl; moreover, the

32

whites have temporarily assuaged their blood thirst. And

so, because Chris has died for them, the blacks will have

a period of reprieve from the whites' violence. It is there-
fore relatively easy for the doctor and the undertaker to

be calm during the autopsy, both having accepted life on

the white man's terms.

But Tyree, pragmatic as he is, still grieves over
the black man's condition. Echoing the book's title, he
laments, "'A black man's a dream, son, a dream that can't
come true.'" He expands his idea by giving Fish advice to
go ahead and dream, "'But be careful what you dream. Dream
only what can happen'" (73).

And that night, as on so many nights following
significant days, Fish dreams. And his dream contains,
as Freud has observed all dreams do, "a repetition of a

"33 The dream's

recent impression of the previous day.
content reflects the same conflicts that the day has
brought Fish: sex, race, and fear. In the dream, Fish
is in his parents' bedroom. There, under his mother's
chair he sees a fishbelly covered with hair; as he stoops
to examine it, a white clock begins thundering, "Don't.
Don't." At this point a locomotive's smokestack touches
the belly and swells it to enormous proportions. Finally
it bursts and blood pours out and

he saw the naked bloody body of Chris with blood

running to all sides of the room round his feet at
his ankles at his knees rising higher higher he had

33

to tiptoe to keep blood from reaching his mouth and
it was too late it was engulfing his head and when
he opened his mouth to scream he was drowning in
blood. . . (75).

It is not difficult to trace the sources of Fish's
imagery and symbols in this dream:
‘white clock: has a white face which can watch him;
Becomes the white code and the blacks who enforce

it by warning him continually against desiring white
women.

 

fishbelly_with‘hair: ever since the first time he

saw a fiEhbeIIy ltS smell has reminded him of sex;

obviously the belly with the hair on it stands for

the female sex organ.

locomotive: years ago having caught his father un-

awares having intercourse with a customer, Fish

described his father as a locomotive; the smokestack

is an obvious phallic symbol.
The immensity of the sexual mystery and problem seems to
be symbolized by the uncontrolled enlargement of the fish-
belly; furthermore, Fish and his father had originally
inflated the real fishbellies. The fact that the belly
is filled with blood seems to symbolize the violence and
danger inherent in sex, especially since Chris is revealed
to be floating in this tide of blood that threatens to
drown Fish.

Although the manifest content of this dream identifies

it as an anxiety-dream, it can be seen to be latently a
wish-fulfillment dream, as Freud argues all dreams really
are. Afraid of the implications of possessing a white

woman, Fish nevertheless desires to know what it is like--

apparently even if it means his death, as his father warns

34

him it will. Thus the dream repeats the dialectic of the
ritual he has undergone the day before: while Fish is
being initiated into the secrets of manhood, he is also
discovering his alienation from the rest of the world.
Other incidents in his life preceding this ritual
support this interpretation. For example, when Fish is
just a child he loses his first name. Through an adventure
instigated by his father, that of blowing up fish bladders
for balloons, the child, too young to discriminate between
bellies and bladders, is forever labeled by this misnomer.
Rex permanently becomes Fishbelly Tucker. An important
portion of his identity has become blemished: the king
has become a lowly fishbelly. And it "stuck to him all
his life, following him to school, to church, tagging along,
like a tin can tied to a dog's tail, across the wide oceans
of the world" (12). One wonders just how far Wright meant
to go with the associations tied to these names. The
possibilities are extraordinary: for example, Jesus Christ
was called both "King of the Jews" and a "fisher of men";
through this name Wright could be tying Fish to Christ just
as he linked Chris and Cross Damon with Him.34 Given an
inherently noble name, the young hero is symbolically
castrated by his own father--who always seems to act out
of a misguided love for his son. At the same time, "Fish
Tucker" is a name full of latent sexual overtones; i.e.,

fish are symbolic of sex (besides Christianity) and Tucker

35

certainly has aural connotations of sex.35 Although Wright
might not have consciously intended these explicit rela-
tionships, they do honor the book's basic premise that
Fish is an innocent victim ruined by a sick society's con-
cept of sexual mores. Moreover, Wright has been known to
play with names before as in Bigger (nigger) Thomas and
Cross Damon (demon). Whether or not Wright set out to
create a name so fraught with archetypal associations
seems a moot point, for the fact that it conjures them up
in the reader's imagination seems in itself to justify
these sallies into the realm of conjecture.

A year after this incident with the fishbellies,
Fish, six years old, has his first encounter with whites
whom he regards as "huge mechanical dolls" (13) completely
incomprehensible to his limited experience. ‘Grabbed by
one of the men to roll some dice for luck, Fishbelly is
blinded by tears and convinced that the unfamiliar term
"luck" must be bad since it sounds like a word he knows
is forbidden. This fear of the unknown is compounded by
the crap players' verbal and physical abuse--his captor's
vanquished competitors throw a brick at him when he is
released--abuse only slightly mitigated by the dollar the
winner has given him. This dollar presents a further
problem to the now thoroughly shaken little boy, for he
must account for the money to his father. Resolved to

hide the truth, he cons his doting father and tells his

36

first lie, another response destined to reappear as a
permanent feature of Fish's personality.36 Not only does
Fish mislead his father, but he is quite careful to keep
to himself anything embarrassing or shameful--losing, as
a result, the comfort of sharing painful experiences. Thus
his first experience with whites has taught him to fear
the race and to lie, and, in so doing, has prevented him
from learning of the universality of his experiences.
Unable to find comfort in a racial heritage he remains
ignorant of, Fish continues to feel different, isolated,
lonely. And so, this scene, according to Saunders Redding,
"sets the tone, which is ironic; establishes the theme,
which is the fragmentation of a personality. . . ."37

In chapter three we get the first glimpse of the
family's status in the black community, when Fish, now
seven years old, is instructed not to associate with the
black railroad workers because, although they are his
color, they are not his kind (19). As a successful under-
taker, Tyree Tucker has been able to establish himself as
socially superior to the rest of the blacks in Clintonville
and can therefore train his son to scorn certain people.38
The shame of it, however, is that Fish is left with no
body of people to call his own. Too proud and rich to
hob nob with the ordinary blacks and racially unable to

fraternize with the whites of his social standing, he is

left virtually isolated. Of course, Fish, at so young an

37

age, cannot conceptualize the problem that he will later
face, although he intuits it vaguely, sensing "a relation
between the worlds of white skins and black skins," but
being unable to "determine just what it was" (23).

A second mystery is partially unveiled to him in
this same chapter when Fish surprises his father fornicating
with a strange woman. Uncertain as to the complete signifi-
cance of what he witnesses, he is nevertheless old enough
to be impressed with his "father's abilityto lie with such
indignant righteousness" (24). Having compared his father's
sexual activity to a locomotive, Fish creates a symbol
that will reappear in his dreams years later. Wright's
imagery is particularly sensuous here:

From that day on, thundering trains loomed in his
dreams--hurtling, sleek, black monsters whose stack
pipes belched gobs of serpentine smoke, whose seething
fireboxes coughed out clouds of pink sparks, whose
pushing pistons sprayed jets of hissing steam--panting
trains that roared yammeringly over far-flung, gleeming
rails only to come to limp and convulsive halts--1ong,
fearful trains that were hauled brutally forward by
red-eyed locomotives that you loved watching and they
(and you trembling!) crashed past (and you longing to
run but finding your feet strangely glued to the ground!)
. . . (25). .

That night he dreams of climbing in and starting a locomotive
and becoming frightened when it starts to roar down the
tracks.

The blacks' general isolation dominates the boys'

discussion of Africa in Fish's next step toward un-manhood.

Broaching a forbidden topic, race relations, Sam initiates

38

a flurried anger among his friends when he argues that
"'A nigger's a black who doesn't know who he is.'" Stung
by the accusation, the boys counter weakly and finally
employ scorn to save face:

'When you know you a nigger, then you ain't no

nigger no more,‘ Sam reasoned. 'You start being a

man! A nigger's something white folks make a black
man believe he is--'

'Your Papa's done stuffed you with crazy ideas,’
Tony said. ’ ' '

'Your old man's got Africa on the brain and he's
made you a copycat,‘ Zeke pronounced (30).
Obviously influenced by Marcus Garvey's conviction that all
blacks should return to Africa, Sam's polemics attempt to
convince the boys that blacks should "'build up Africa,
'cause tha's our true home'" (32). He attacks his friends
for straightening their hair to look like whites, which
they deny vehemently, while Fishbelly self-consciously
refrains from thinking about "why he had had it straightened"
(30). Sam announces that they are ashamed of being black
and leads Fish down an intricate series of arguments to
prove the blacks' displacement, concluding,
'You niggers ain't nowhere. You ain't in Africa,
'cause the white man took you out. And you ain't in

America, 'cause if you was, you'd act like Americans--'
(30).

 

Fish, made nervous by these suggestions that he's neither
African nor the American he claims to be, decides to leave.
As he goes, Sam touches his shoulder. Fish shoves him

away and they grapple with each other. Separating, they

launch into verbal attacks and Fish, having the last cruel

39

word, returns home aware that he hadn't wanted to fight.
Unhappy with himself he glares at his reflection in the
mirror, spits at it and hisses, "'Nigger'" (34). Although
this obviously is a key chapter in the book, the event
itself soon escapes Fishbelly's conscious thoughts, only
to assist in the accretion of subliminal self-hatred.

At a local farm fair Fish and his friends have fur-
ther experiences that teach them to hate themselves. To
begin with, they are annoyed that on Thursday, the only
day for Negroes, whites can attend too if they want to,
"'Hell, it's a white folks' world,‘ Sam said cynically"
(39). Desirous of seeing a skin show, they are turned
away because the girls are white. So they attend a black
show instead. Afterwards, they discover a sideshow whose
main attraction is

HIT THE NIGGER HEAD
Three baseballs for 50¢ (41)

Hypnotized, they watch while a white throws three baseballs

at the bobbing head. Fishbelly's reaction is symptomatic

of his by now deep-seated ambivalence toward his own race,
Fishbelly felt that he had either to turn away from
that grinning black face, or, like the white man,
throw something at it. That obscene black face was
his own face and, to quell the war in his heart, he
had either to reject it in hate or accept it in love.
It was easier to hate that degraded black face than
-to love it (42).

As a result, he buys three balls as do Zeke and Tony; of

the boys Tony is the only one that hits the black man in

the mouth. Suddenly ashamed, the boys decide to go home.

40

In the last section of Part I (chapters 13-16),
Fish experiences his single most significant initiation.
Whereas the ritual of Chris' death had deeply affected
Fish, there, at least, he was only an observer gaining
knowledge vicariously through someone else's troubles.
Here he comes to know first hand the realities of black
life; here he learns the nightmare side of his waking
dream. Lessons include how the police treat blacks, how
blacks fool whites, and what having a woman is like. The
ritual begins in fairly simple rebellion of his mother's
piety and ends in a commitment to rebel against all sexual
codes forbidding him access to white women. It sets the
pattern of his life.

During a lull in the mud fight that Fish has chosen
to participate in against his mother's wishes, he and Tony
are arrested for trespassing by two white policemen. And
so, without warning, the world becomes very real to Fish-
belly: he is a black man arrested for a crime in a white
world. Since Fish's initiation into his true status must
include knowledge of the sexual boundaries surrounding
him, Wright chooses to illustrate his sexual limitations
through the archetypal image of castration. For example,
when the police stop at a drive-in restaurant, Fish, still
in a daze at being arrested, stares absently at a white
waitress. Annoyed with what they think is his impertinence,

the police threaten to castrate Fish with a penknife.

41

Terrified, Fish faints--to the delight and amazement of
his tormentors. At the station the officers continue to
torture Fish by promising to castrate him. And Fish
continues to faint. But, after passing out three times,
Fish is so filled with hatred that he steels himself
against the sensation and manages to remain conscious,
determined to die if necessary to preserve his dignity.
Ironically, this threatened castration has for the moment
made a man of him, although in later scenes he will be
servile and slobbering.

Soon afterward Fish discovers a-more subtle form of
castration than physical mutilation: his father's psychic
emasculation, made clear when Tyree plays the role of a
humble nigger, an Uncle Tom, to the white man's vanity.39
As on the night of Chris' death, Fish is repelled by what
he sees. "This was a father whom he had never known, a
father whom he loathed and did not want to know' (115).

As soon as they are alone in the cell, however, Tyree
resumes his normal mien.
Tyree's knees lost their bent posture, his back
straightened, his arms fell normally to his sides,
and that distracted, foolish, noncommittal expression
vanished and he reached out and crushed Fishbelly to
him (115).
His astute advice to his stunned son is to obey the whites,
do whatever they say, give them no opportunity to punish
him further by resisting orders. Fish reacts ambivalently

to his father: he is both ashamed of him and grateful for

his help.

42

The next day in childrens' court, the boys are pa—
rolled to their fathers. During the hearing Fish is so
overcome with fear that he feels like he is dreaming. Once
freed he feels relieved, but because of his time in jail
he is uncomfortably aware of himself in relation to the
world. Uneasy in the white section of town, he and Tony
long for the Black Belt where they know how to act. Walking
home they automatically slump into a "kind of shuffling
gait" whenever they meet a white face. "Though Fishbelly
was unaware of it, he too, like his father, was rapidly
learning to act an 'adt'" (119). Out of their humiliation,
the boys vow solemnly never to reveal the weaknesses they
manifested during their incarceration.

On the way home, Fish discovers a badly injured dog.
In a conscious effort to prepare himself for death, he
swiftly eviscerates the animal, observing ruefully, "'That's
what they did to Chris'" (124). Wright's imagery is par-
~ticu1arly effective in the beginning of this scene as he
allows the act to convey the emotion; but when Fish recalls
the analogous autopsy of Chris, the reader doubts Fish's
ability to make the connection.40

Fish next arrives on the scene of the accident that
had injured the dog, where a white man lies pinned under
his wrecked car. Tormented by the man's suffering, Fish
tries to help. As he pulls at the door wedged into the

man's back, the helpless stranger commands, "'G-goddammit,

43

q-quick, niggerl'" (125). Fish freezes. Because he has
mastered himself only incompletely he leaves the white man,
refusing to help someone who calls him "nigger." The white
world has not yet beaten him down to complete servility.
Fish climbs back up to the road, intending to flag a car for
help; but the first car he sees is driven by the men who
arrested him. Flashing the penknife in Fish's face, Clem
peremptorily sends him home. Reality disappears. Controlled
by fear, Fish, neglecting to mention the injured motorist,
runs home. There, consumed by fear and shame, he shudders
at his blackness, rejecting it.

The harrowing day is not yet over, however. When Fish
meets his jubilant father he is disgusted and reticent, un-
able to reconcile his father's behavior with what a father
should be. Tyree, on the other hand, brags to his son that
he manipulates whites.41 Fish interprets his father's actions
in an opposite light; he "felt that Tyree was shamelessly
crawling before white people and would keep on crawling as
long as it paid off" (128). To him Tyree's behavior had been
obscene. Consequently, when he is interrogated about his time
in jail he omits the significant details: the fainting, the
dog's disembowelment. By giving his father only the superfi-
cial facts, he has managed to remove his father from his life.
And after his father explains how to "act" Fish feels their
estrangement is complete, grievously concluding that he had
lost his father on the day he had discovered the full extent

of the whites' brutality. He weeps for

44

the trembling he hid behind false laughter, for the
self-abrogation of his manhood. He knew in a confused
way that no white man would ever need to threaten

Tyree with castration; Tyree was already castrated
(131f) .

Fishbelly tries to fight this by hurting his father, yelling
to him that he is a coward. Stricken by the assault, Tyree
withers. Fish repents and apologizes, whereupon Tyree
musters his strength and resumes the lesson, "'I got to
break your goddamn spirit or you'll git killed, sure as
hell!'" (133). Contrite, Fish submits to his father.
Fish's final step into manhood, that of having a
woman, occurs in the section's last chapter, 16. Not one
to let his son grow up unassisted, Tyree plans Fish's
baptism into the world of flesh. Before taking him to
the whorehouse he owns, Tyree reveals his own dream, that
of Fish's becoming the educated leader of the blacks, the
man the whites will respect and consult. Ironically, this
earnest man's attempts to raise Fish properly end by
preventing him from becoming anything other than a confused
white-loving "nigger." When his father announces, "'I'm
taking you to a woman tonight,'" Fish is initially startled
and amazed, questioning to himself what women "have to do
with courage, cowardice, and shame"; immediately, however,
he relents and hero—worships his father, "marveling at his
wisdom, his generosity" (136). Seeing his father as the
key to life's wonderful mysteries, Fish unconsciously
accepts his father's life style, including his approach

toward whites.42

45

Proud of his domain, Tyree indicates.that he owns the
cathouse and runs it by paid arrangement with the chief of
police. Fish is awed. He has been indoctrinated well. The
fact that some day he will inherit this successful business
humbles him and further inculcates him into his father's
philosophy.

But behind Tyree's calm understatements lurks the
fear of white women: he is mortally afraid that Fish,
desiring a white woman, will set himself up for murder.
Therefore, he explicitly states that "'The white ones feel
just like the black ones. There ain't a bit of difference"
(137f).

Once inside the brothel, Fish mirrors his father's
behavior. He is so insouciant that Tyree later asks if it
really was his first time. It had been, but Fish simply
had played his father; feigning nonchalance, he had soon
learned how easy it was to dominate the madam's daughter:

'You Tyree's son and you even talk like 'im.‘

Vera's eyes hung upon his face.

'Aw, I know how to handle these white folks.‘

He stepped into his father's shoes (140).
Embarrassingly obvious to some critics, this sCene none-
theless indicates Fish's acceptance of his father's dogma.
Afterwards the two men walk home, smoking cigarets--more
evidence of Fish's emergence from childhood. During the
walk Tyree casually inquires if Fish has forgotten "them."

Fish is confused, especially to hear that Tyree had

expected sex to "wash away any appeal that the white world

46

had made to him" (143). Instinctively he lies to his father,
assuring him that he has forgotten the whites. Tyree
triumphantly croons on, deprecating white women and praising
black ones. It suddenly dawns in Fish's mind that whites
could participate in his sexual experiences. He recaptures
the memory of the white waitress who had served the cops
and
he knew deep in his heart that there would be no peace
in his blood until he had defiantly violated the line
that the white world had dared him to cross under the
threat of death (144).
Fish is unknowingly in love with the white world that says
he is so brutally dangerous that he must be killed for
violating its sacred altar, the white woman. This desire
lodges within him becoming his reason for living.

That night Fish dreams of being on a runaway loco-
motive with a white engineer who keeps yelling at him to
stoke the engine with "'MORE COAL!'" Eventually Fish's
labors uncover a white woman hidden in the coal who tanta-
lizes him by seizing hold of his shovel. To escape the
danger, Fish leaps off the roaring train and when he looks
up, Maud Williams (the madam) is saying to him: "'Honey,
you know better'n to try to hide a white woman in a coal
pile like that! They was sure to find her. . .'" (145).
Once more Wright couches a wish-fulfillment dream in an
anxiety or nightmare dream. This dream not only illustrates

Fish's fascination with white women and his desire to know

one, but it also shows his fears, his realization of the

47

dangers inherent in such an act. Again Fish's dream paral-
lels Fish's life: it is, as Frye would say, a dialectic
of desire and repugnance.

A fascinating explanation of the uncontrollable
yearning for white women by black men is found in Eldridge
Cleaver's Soul on Ice, in which he attributes it to the
caste system we have in this country. The lower class men,
according to Cleaver are attracted to the symbols of
beauty and purity established by the dominant society, in

this case, the white females.43

And.so it is with Fishbelly
Tucker. Tantalized by glimpses into the white world, he
lusts after the apotheosis of beauty that means his death.
Unable to release himself from the temptations and bitter-
sweet offerings of the white world, he has become a man
possessed. But always complicating his problem and provid-
ing the dialectic tension is the memory of Chris who yielded
to the call of the senses. Fish's immediate solution is to
take a white Negro as a mistress; although the situation
dissatisfies him, it temporarily quells the pain in his
heart.

Edward Margolies expands on Cleaver's theory as he
argues that the death of Chris supplies both Wright and
Fishbelly with

central insights into the connection between sex and
caste. The Negro, they discover, who submits to white
oppression is as much castrated psychologically as the
bellhop is physically. Thus, for them the lynchings

become symbolic of the roles they are expected to play
in life. 4

 

 

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48

The penalty for simply desiring white women is no less real
than for actually consummating this-passion. Both lead to
emasculation and a kind of death, an alienation from self.
Fish and his kind develop a certain neurotic condition in
which the real self is separated from and scorned by the
idealized self. The real self is actually victimized by
the idealized self.45 As Horney says of the neurotic,
Although he may be successful, may function fairly
well, or even be carried away by grandiose fantasies
of unique achievement; he will nevertheless feel
inferior or insecure.
Against the realities of the white world that agrees with
his feelings of inferiority, Fish has no recourse other
than to continually fight down his real self. He begins
to hate himself. Soon, like other neurotics, alienated
from themselves, he loses "the feeling of being an active

"47 But Fish continues

determining force in his own life.
to function as Horney and Kierkegaard have observed other
neurotics do, for it is a quiet despair this alienation
from self:

The loss of self, says Kierkegaard, is 'sickness unto

death'; it is despair—-despair at not being conscious

of having a self, or despair at not being willing to

be ourselves. But it is a despair (still following

Kierkegaard) which does not clamor or scream. People

go on living as if they were still in immediate contact

with this alive center.

Throughout the rest of the book we witness Fish's

transformation into a neurotic, as he moves from "rebellion
to acceptance," as he grows up.49 As a rebel, he has a

chance to retain his real self in the face of the demands

49

from his father and.the whites.‘ But as one who accommodates
himself to their injunctions and.injustices, he loses con-
tact with his real self, preferring to.live instead with
his idealized self. The fierce neurotic pride engendered
reassures him of his superiority and godlike stature. He
need not be a black among blacks, he.can be a white among
whites. This arrogance will be his downfall.
But at the same time Fish is proud.and self-assured
in relation to other blacks, he is humble and afraid in
his dealings with whites. A neurotic conflict of this
sort according to Horney "produces a fundamental uncertainty
about the feeling of identity. Who am I? Am I the proud
super-human being--or am I the subdued, guilty and rather
despicable creature?"50 Although a neurotic may not be
consciously aware of the existence of both of his con-
trasting selves, his dreams often reveal this intrapsychic
conflict. Thus, in
his conscious mind he may be the master mind, the
savior of mankind, the one for whom no achievement
is impossible; while at the same time in his dreams
he may be a freak, a sputtering idiot, or a derelict
lying in the gutter. Finally, even in his conscious
way of experiencing himself, a neurotic may shuttle
between a feeling of arrogant omnipotence and of
being the scum of the earth.5

.As Horney points out, a conflict arises "because the neu-

rotic identifies himself ig_toto with his superior proud

self and with his despised self." Therefore, if he
experiences himself as a superior being, he tends to
be expansive in his strivings and his belief about

what he can achieve; he tends to be more or less
openly arrogant, ambitious, aggressive and demanding;

50

he feels self-sufficient; he is disdainful.of others;
he requires admiration or blind obedience. Conversely,
if in his mind he is his subdued self he tends to feel
helpless, is compliant and appeasing, depends upon
others and craves their affection. . . . If these two
ways of experiencing himself operate at the same time
he must feel like two people pulling in opposite
directions.
The neurotic solutions to these stresses run roughly into
three general categories: (1) compartmentalizing--the twO'
selves are experienced at different times and thus no
conscious conflict arises; (2) streamlining--one self
permanently overcomes the other; and (3) resigning--the
neurotic takes no interest at all in his psychic life.53
Since Horney admits that these characteristic solu-
tions might better be labelled trends than exact categories,
I think it is safe to suggest that at one time or another
Fish unconsciously, of course, tries out each solution in
his attempt to avoid anxiety. Thus, when he is with whites
he tends to compartmentalize his two selves, automatically
becoming the self-effacing, object and cringing Negro they
expect him to be. On the other hand, when he is with
blacks he is his arrogant-vindictive self. Although at
times he is almost morbidly dependent on his father, by
Part II he has begun to use him too, to control him in
order to have his own way, manifesting signs of having
streamlined his problem by becoming his arrogant-vindictive
self exclusively. Because he was
Fundamentally more intelligent than Tyree, he

quickly found that he could manipulate Tyree's
IMTtives for ends beyond Tyree's ken. His respect

51

for Tyree's money checked his tendency toward overt

hostility and shunted his behavior into postures of

pretended respect. . . . He unconsciously reasoned

in this manner: 'Papa, you are black and you

brought me into a world of hostile whites with whom

you have made a shamefully dishonorable peace. I

shall use you, therefore, as a protective shield to

fend off that world, and I'm right in doing so' (149).
This is the same attitude that Fish takes towards the poor
blacks whose rents pay his allowance. Since he feels superi-
or to them, he is convinced that it is his absolute right
to abuse them. He is a black man cursed with a white point
of view. And the psychic conflict caused by this mental
state nearly destroys him. For when Fish's father and
mistress die he has no one to fall back on--he recognizes
his own helplessness, his vulnerability, his aloneness.
And yet he must act strong and self-sufficient. Suddenly
both the expansive and self-effacing solutions fail him:
he is powerless against the whites and left without help
or love. While he is in jail, therefore, and later on the
plane to Paris, he resigns himself to his fate, taking no
active interest in his psychic life.

Part II, "Days and Nights," continues the ritual

of Fish's initiation and rejection as it illustrates the
book's major themes: Fish's love-hatred of the white
world and its misuse of him; his isolation from his own
pe0ple and alienation from himself; and, the transference
of an inheritance from Tyree to Fish. Because Wright

focuses on Tyree as he fights for his life against a world

determined to cripple and, if necessary, kill all black

52

men, many critics have declared.that it is Tyree who runs
away with this section, leaving Fish in the wings.54 But
Fish has his own time in the limelight when he is forced
to recapitulate the ritual after his father's death.
Throughout the book Wright suggests the symbolic nature
of Fish's actions by having him often mirror his father;
the ritual of castration continues indefatigably.
For example, in his choice of a near-white mistress,

Fish mirrors his father who himself has shown desire for
white flesh in the very pale Mrs. Gloria Mason. Both men
apparently try to compensate for feelings of inadequacy
by keeping mistresses who tickle their vanity.55 Gloria
even acts like a white woman, and her self-assured aplomb
impresses Fish. On the other hand, his own lover, Gladys,
who has accommodated herself to her low social position,
irritates him. The bastard daughter of a black woman and
a white man, Gladys is an isolate admitted into neither
world and misused by both: she too has had an illegitimate
daughter by her former black English teacher. But she
fails to resent her treatment.' This acceptance appalls
Fish who agonizes over his own feelings toward the white
world.

He had never had any intimate contact with that“

world, yet he hated it. Or did he? When he thought

of that white world he hated it; but when he day-

dreamed of it he loved it (161).

Since Gladys is mentally unable to comprehend Fish's problem,

their conversations about whites only frustrate him. And

53

so, as he tries to drown his dreams in Gladys, he finds

that he is being pulled further and further toward the white
world that so attracts and intimidates him. The dialectic
of dread and desire that appeared in his dreams as a child
begins to haunt him while he is awake.

As a result of being torn between conflicting
attitudes toward the whites and because of his sexual
hungers and feelings of dissatisfaction, Fish finally
stops attending school. When Tyree confronts him with
his flunking, Fish boldly announces that he was about to
quit school anyway. Tyree, angry and disappointed at
seeing his dream of an educated son disappear, nonetheless
gives Fish a job as a rent-collector. Then, to impress
Fish, he brags of his invisible power in the black com-
munity and his influence with whites. But Fish is so
elated to be "at last on his own, a part of the black com-
munity" that he doesn't hear Tyree's cautionary statement
that his power over the blacks must be kept secret, since
he uses and abuses his own people to gain status with the
white crooks who run Clintonville (174).56 Moreover, Fish
sees no conflict between using blacks and being a part of
their community, delighted as he is to be stepping into
his father's shoes: "'And I'll keep Gladys like Papa
keeps Gloria,‘ he whispered. . ." (174).

Just how removed he really is from the rest of the

black community is evident during the rent-collecting scenes.

54

The tenants, labelled "grotesque".by Edward Margolies,57
resent him and let him know it.

'Tyree got goddamn nerve sending a little Lead-
Kindly-Light nigger like you for my rent!‘ Mr. Bentley
would bellow. 'Shoo, you little fly-nigger, 'fore I
swat you and mash your guts out!’ (175)

Fishbelly is embarrassed and nervous as he listens to these
tirades, patiently awaiting the ten dollars rent. Collecting
from Sam's father, he must suffer the lectures on black

pride and Africa; his reaction to this is pragmatic, "'Baby
Jesus . . . I don't want to read nothing about Africa. I
want to make some goddamn mgngy'" (178). He seems to be
convinced that money can buy him whiteness.

Fish remarks to his father that the blacks are "sick"
because they complain about their oppression but do not act
to end it (181). Tyree tells him to forget them. But Fish
cannot, as he continues to discover the blacks' hidden hopes
and obvious failures. Ultimately, however, his arrogant-
vindictive self takes over and he regards them as parasites,
feeling superior to them, unaware that his white outlook
has scarred his own black life; he has no place in the black
community because he is enticed by the white power structure.
Fish is "fatally in love with the white world, because the
white world could offer him the chance to develop his
personality and his wealth without fear of reprisal."58

To survive the anguish of rent-collecting, Fish

hardens himself, becoming, like his father, a facade of a

man. He wears a fixed smile to cover the cynicism he

 

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55

feels. (He submerges his inner self; and, although he is

by now aware of his isolation, he "acts" like a member of
the community. He has learned to play the role of nigger--
even to other blacks if it is to his advantage. (Bigger
Thomas plays the role well with the Daltons and when he is
questioned about Mary's murder. Cross Damon plays the role
perfectly when he applies for Lionel Lane's birth certifi-
cate.)

Fish is trapped between two worlds. Neither wants
him. His neurotic pride ironically forces him to identify
with the elite white world, his oppressor. Furthermore,
because he has idealized himself as master of his fate, he
is horrified to learn that Gladys calmly accepts her
inferior status. And when Gladys pragmatically reminds
him of his money in order to comfort his injured pride,
Fish attacks its source: "'My Papa's got money and he acts
and lives like a nigger'" (190). Although Gladys cannot
understand his restlessness, Fish, moved by love, offers
to take her out of the brothel she works in.

That same evening Gladys dies in a fire, and the
ritual of death and isolation begins with shattering
implications for Fish. For soon after claiming the corpses
of the victims, Fish discovers the extent of his father's
complicity in illegal activities: as half-owner of the
club that burned, Tyree is morally and legally responsible

for the deaths caused by violations of safety measures.

56

From this point until Tyree's death at the end of the
section, Wright shifts the focus of his attention from Fish
to Tyree as the father struggles for his life.

Tyree immediately calls upon his young son as his
one and only ally, who, like other Wright heroes, loses
his manhood at the same time he becomes an adult; that is,
although his father treats him like a man, he has already
been emasculated by the whites since whenever he is in
public he is forced to play a role. As a result, he is
continually confronted with the question "Who am I? Am
I independent and self-assertive or am I dependent and
self-effacing?" Since his value as a person is based on
how others perceive him, he reminds one of Faulkner's Joe
Christmas, a man treated with respect until others learn
he is black. And so, like Joe, Fish is a man forever in
search of himself, "which is to say Long Dream [sic] is
in the tradition of American novels which deal with search
for identify and rebirth."59

The most significant scenes in Part II are those
where Tyree plays his role as "nigger," since the acting
is witnessed by Fish who is amazed at Tyree's versatility
in exploiting the white man's preconceived notions of
blacks. Tyree gives his star performance for Chief
Cantley, a scene aptly described by Edward Margolies as

l."60

"one of the best . . . in the nove Secretly deter-

mined to take Cantley to court with him, Tyree must convince

57

the chief that the cancelled kickback checks Cantley
foolishly endorsed have been destroyed, whereas in reality
they have not been. Playing on the white man's emotions
and prejudices, Tyree transfixes Fish with the show:

Was that his father? . . . There were two Tyrees:

one was a Tyree resolved unto death to save himself
and yet daring not to act out of his resolve; the
other was a make-believe Tyree, begging, weeping--a
Tyree who was a weapon in the hands of the determined
Tyree. The nigger with moans and wailing had sunk
the harpoon of his emotional claim into the white
man's heart (228).

 

Although Tyree seems to betray his race by being an Uncle
Tom, his nigger acting temporarily saves his life by
reassuring Cantley of his innocence. Tyree is following
the deathbed advice of the Invisible Man's grandfather who
instructed his son to "'overcome 'em with yeses, undermine
'em with grins, agree 'em to death and destruction, let
'em swoller you till they vomit or bust wide open."'61
In this same scene Fishbelly himself reveals his
disloyalty to blacks by offering the Grove's black pro-
prietor as a scapegoat. But the man dies before the con-
spirators can pin the negligence charge on him. Faced then
with the realization that he "had acted toward his people
like the whites acted," Fish feels remorseful (231). But
Fish is too immersed in the white world's point of view
to feel guilty for very long; using other blacks for his
own advancement seems natural to him. Later, in fact,

while his father struggles desperately for his skin, Fish

observes him, detached, through white eyes as he acts

58

before Mayor‘Wakefield.. As has been.the pattern before,
whenever Tyree is under stress Fish.is.disgusted with
his weakness; his arrogant self has little sympathy for
a.self-effacing father (Fish is actively externalizing
his own self-hate).

Fish does, however, learn some basic truths about
black life when Tyree consults with a white lawyer, Harvey
MdWilliams, as he attempts to indict Cantley with himself.
During the drive across town, Fish realizes that their
lives--all black lives-~are amoral, since blacks are in
the impossible situation of being at the mercy of whites.
And once inside McWilliams' home, Tyree voices Fish's
unspoken observations when he says,

'There ain't no law but white law . . . I ain't
corrupt. I'm a nigger. Niggers ain't corrupt.
Niggers ain't got no rights but them theybuy. You
say I'm wrong to buy me some rights? How you think
we niggers live? . . . I took the white man's law
and lived under it. It was bad law, but I made it
work for me and my family, for my son there. . . .
Now, just don't tell me to go and give it all up.

I won't! I'll never give up what I made out of my
blood!' (248-250).62
At last Fish can understand his father. He finally knows
the "shame and glory . . . the pride, the desperation and
the hope" that was theirs (250). Filled with this know-
ledge, he can forgive his father but he still cannot accept
their situation as easily as Tyree has.
That night Fish goes through his Gethsemane, fighting

off the role of innocent victim-—of servile nigger. It is

a struggle he has known before and in the future will

59

encounter again, since according to John Williams, "to be
black is to be forever embattled.not only with the world
of the whites, but with one'sself."63 Fish's own identity
crisis revolves around his intuition that whites are cor-
rect when they argue that his peOple are inferior. And
because he is too rebellious to accept his second-rate
status, he feels he is different from other blacks--including
his father who seems to have accommodated himself to his
subordinate position. During his emotional struggle to
free himself from victimization, Fish is repelled again
by the Black Belt and all it stands for when he remembers
that the allowance he had so casually spent came partially
from Gladys' earnings at the whorehouse his father had is“
owned. To him the Belt was "tainted, useless, repugnant"
(253). Because his association with the Black Belt would
contradict his superior image of himself, he wants no part
of it.

That night, as on so many significant nights, Fish
dreams. And what he dreams reveals his true fears. As
Karen Horney says of the neurotic, "His inside knowledge
of himself shows unmistakably in his dreams, when he is
close to the reality of himself."64 Since Fish is a com-
pulsive neurotic, driven by his own self-hate and self-
contempt, he has the continual "feeling of being isolated
and helpless in a world conceived as potentially hostile."65

This "basic anxiety," as Horney labels it, is revealed in

60

Fish's dream. In it Gloria.and.Gladys--symbols of the

white world--stuff Fish's pockets with money (guilty,
unclean money earned in his father's whorehouse). And as
soon as Fish has it in his possession, Chief Cantley rushes
in to arrest him for stealing. To escape arrest, Fish
climbs in a coffin and pretends to be dead; but the chief

is not fooled. By using the white-black girls Wright

seems to be suggesting that Fish fears both worlds, that
blacks will eventually betray him and whites punish him.
(And this is indeed exactly what happens to his own father.)
Although Fish is obviously suffering psychologically, he can-
not consciously admit his fears, since he like "every
neurotic at bottom is loath to recognize limitations to

what he expects of himself and believes it possible to
attain. His need to actualize his idealized image is so
imperative that he must shove aside the checks as irrelevant
or non-existent."66 When Fish awakes, therefore, he will
have forgotten his dream-—like he has forgotten all the
other nightmares that have revealed his basic anxiety.

The next day (Chapter 31) the news breaks that
Tyree's evidence has been stolen and that Harvey McWilliams
is charging high officials with fraud. Naturally Tyree is
in grave danger. Refusing police protection for obvious
reasons, he stubbornly intends to stay and fight rather
than run and admit guilt. Tyree then presents Fish with

his last will and testament, a gesture Fish interprets as

61

uniting the living with the dead. Fish's intuition once
more proves itself as Tyree is shot.,

Brutally coercing Tyree's friends into betraying
him, the police chief arranges Tyree's murder. Tyree is
shot point blank by the chief's men when he is called to
Maud's brothel. The story is then circulated that Tyree
charged into the house, firing pistols, and was then
mortally wounded by the police in self-defense. Nobody
believes the story but nobody will deny it either since
they fear for their own lives.

In the meantime, Fish, left at the undertaker's
muses over the blacks' constant, self-sacrificing worship
of whites:

Black people paid a greater tribute to the white enemy
than they did to God, whom they could sometimes forget;
but the white enemy could never be forgotten. God
meted out rewards and punishments only after death;
you felt the white man's judgment every hour (263f).
When Fish learns that his own father has been sacrificed
to this harsh enemy, he goes wild, throwing things, smashing
them, screaming for blood.

Arriving at Maud's, Fish learns of her involuntary
participation in Tyree's immolation. Incapable of sur-
rendering their own lives to a higher loyalty--that of
rebellion and freedom--these blacks have given fealty to
a lesser one and once more have assisted the white man in

his rape of their souls. Fish, already angered, is further

infuriated when Tyree is refused a doctor. His dying

62

father reasons with him, advising him to play along with
the police, swearing that he will fight from his grave to
convict Cantley. Soon he dies.

At once Chief Cantley approaches Fish, ready to
talk business. He has an officer relate the police version
of the incident, and Fish does not argue. Maud and the
girls obliquely declare "him their new boss" (275). Fish,
realizing that he is being measured by his father's
assistant, the whites, the whores, and his mother, feels
inadequate, incapable of replacing Tyree. But, confronted
by the mutual hostilities of the two worlds, Fish abruptly
announces that he's heading for the office--his office now--
vowing, "'Papa left me in charge, and, goddammit, I'm going
to take charge and all hell ain't going to stop me!'" (277).
The mantle of responsibility has been passed on to a new
generation; the ritual of castration continues.

The final section, "Waking Dream," reveals the
father reincarnated in the son. Its title seems to be
from Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale" (l. 79) and its epigraph

is from Cymbeline (Act IV, ii, 11. 306, 307); the heroine

 

Imogen speaks, having just awakened from a death-like
stupor caused by a drug she had taken as a restorative.
Her dream had been a reflection of the reality surrounding
her in sleep and so she says,

The dream's here still: even when I wake it is
Without me, as within me: not imagined. . . (279).

63

Similarly, life for Fish from now on will be a mirror of
his dreams, a nightmare. All the anxiety and fear that
his dreams have illustrated will be brought to the surface
as he too fights for his life as his father had. As the
first section was Fish's initiation, the second his proba-
tion, the third is his total Victimization. He is society's
neurotic child, playing the role society dictates but
forbidden entrance into its coveted demesne. And society
demands that he, a Negro in MissisSippi, must be a victim.
Therefore, in order to survive, Fish plays his role just
as Tyree for years had played his.

The first thing that Fish does is deliver a packet
of papers to Gloria, obeying one of the mandates of Tyree's
will. At her house he discovers her and Dr. Bruce in the
process of running away to escape the hostile white law.
Although their leaving increases Fish's sense of loneliness,
he generously abets their escape by letting them use his
hearse. Before going, Gloria chastizes Fish for speaking
in a nigger dialect; in reply Fish argues, "'Hell, I just
want to talk like everybody else'" and slips back into
his drawl (286). Cognizant of the effect of his language
on other blacks, Fish has learned to talk like them so
they will trust him. He feels superior to other blacks
but is canny enough to pretend he isn't, another manifesta-
tion of his role playing. Not only does Fish disguise his

real self from whites and blacks but he hides it from

64

himself. Deep down he knows that someday he will be forced
to run too; for the troubled truce he has made with himself
will drive him to seek his soul elsewhere.

The first step he takes in his struggle against the
white world that has killed his father is to break all ties
with his mother. She and Tyree's assistant, Jim, attempt
to force him back into childhood and school, but he resists,
knowing that to fight the enemy he must remain an independ-
ent man. And yet he "was with the enemy against his own
people" while hating "that enemy because he saw himself and
his people as the enemy saw them" (288f). Cursed with
ambivalence he is forever stranded between the two worlds,
an isolate. He leaves home to take his stand.

Having the same double vision about his father as
he had when Tyree was alive, Fish is incapable of truly
mourning for him or of truly hating his murderers. He
had Seen him through white eyes but he also knew the problems
that the man had faced as a black,

for, in a sense, Tyree was that shadow of himself cast
by a white world he loved because of its power and
hated because of its condemnation of him. (Thus,
though he could not grieve for Tyree, his living

had to become a kind of grieving monument to his
memory and a reluctant tribute to his slayers (290).

.Just as Ahab's and the Parsee's shadows merge in the final

«chapters of Moby Dick, Tyree has become Fish's shadow, his

 

ciarkened alter ego. And Fish takes up where Tyree left

(Iff, playing the game with Cantley, working with but not

65

respecting Maud, and arranging the enormous funeral--which
now includes his father's coffin.

This funeral consummates the ritual of death and
destruction which began with the freak fire at the night-
club. Ironically, the man who arranged for and organized
the mass funeral was himself responsible for the deaths;
furthermore, he is among the corpses waiting to be buried.
Tyree Tucker, the undertaker who made his money burying
black dreams, has not been invulnerable to death, has met
the end of his own dream.

A huge crowd attends the funeral of the forty-three,
packed in the sweltering church to mourn their black brothers
and sisters. But the comfort of the ritual sermon is lost
on a musing Fishbelly, since the only source of interest to
him is the fact that his liaison with the white world lies
dead before him. During the Reverend's thundering, Fish
receives a mysterious letter. Writing from Detroit, Gloria
sends Fish her love and the other half of the cancelled
checks. Cantley has no certain knowledge of their existence,
as Fish had not until this moment. He is astounded again
at Tyree's cunning and also aware of the danger those
checks hold for him since Tyree had been killed because
of them.

As he leaves the church Maud stops him. He is
immediately suspicious of her. His doubts are confirmed

when she mentions that Cantley has visited her and asked

66

about some checks. Fish lapses into his act to convince
his spying business partner that he's innocent. There is,
he realizes, no one he can trust.

Back in his tiny apartment, he hides the checks in
the chimney hearth. No sooner has he done this than Harvey
McWilliams arrives to apologize for having failed Tyree,
explaining that they have common enemies. Fish, however,
is wary and cannot trust the white man. McWilliams leaves
and Fish rushes after him to repeat his father's words
verbatim, "'There's tag of 'em for every gag of us'" (308).
He cannot trust whites, he says, even McWilliams, because
there is no way for him "'to know which one's honest and
which one's crooked. They ain't got signs on 'em and they
all look alike. . .'" (308). Out of respect for Fish's
candor, McWilliams shakes his hand. Fish wants to return
the trust but cannot; all he can do is sob.

The next day his acting talents are put on the line
when Cantley visits him at the office. Fish is uneasy
since "he could not determine what kind of reality he
reflected in the white man's mind" (309). Cantley confronts
him with McWilliams' visit and Fish knows instinctively
that he will have to lie convincingly if Cantley is to
believe him. Making his voice quiver he vehemently denies
the checks' existence. Shame drives him to sobbing as he
recognizes that he is acting like his father had, "symbol-

izing the continuing fate of the Southern Negro."67 He

67

is filled with bitter hatred of.himself and of Cantley who
has driven him to such means.

Fish lies, cries, and acts confused. Finally
Cantley asks if he knows how Tyree was killed. Clever
enough to speak the lies spread by the police, he mutters,
"'Resisting arrest.'" When the chief asks if he believes
it, Fish must assert that he does. Cantley then tells him
the truth that he already knows, that.Tyree had worked for
a syndicate and was killed for breaking the code of silence;
what follows is a classic interrogation, indicative of
how the whites regard blacks as a subhuman species:

'Now, Fish, you're mad about what happened to

Tyree--'

'Nawsir!‘ he shouted, his lower lip quivering.

'It'd be natural. Niggers can get mad--'

'I ain't mad at nobody, Chief!‘ he screamed, seeking
refuge in the folds of prejudice in the white man's
mind (312).

Cantley counters with the statement that he doesn't really
know Fish as he had known his father. This scares Fish
since Cantley is attempting to enter his secret soul that
so hates this particular white man. But instead of lashing
out with the truth and signing his death warrant, Fish
merely sobs. Cantley is driven to distraction, claiming
that he can't trust Fish because he's one of the new breed
of niggers who can't speak what they feel. In his frus-

tration he pinpoints the crux of the matter, "'We make you

scared of us, and then we ask you to tell us the truth.

68

And you can't! Goddamit you can't!'" (131f). He leaves
angrily.68

Later Emma and Jim try to reason with Fish, Jim
explaining that "'you say the right words, but they don't
believe you'" (315). Fish feels that they have sided with
the whites against him and resolves to flee, bemoaning his
cursed state in Cain's terms,

'Papa . . . you left something that's marked me!

It's like it's in my plaad! . . . My papa, my papa's
papa, and my papa's papa's papa, look what you done
to me' (316).
What black fathers have done throughout the generations,
according to Wright, is teach their offspring to kow tow
to whites until they have left no pride in themselves or
their heritage.

Before Fish can act on his resolution to run, he
is arrested. That night, sometime after he is asleep, a
young blonde girl knocks on his door. Fish thinks that
he is experiencing a waking dream for this is unmistakably
a white girl offering herself to him. She insists that
Maud has sent her, but Fish is afraid, a feeling born of
inchoate and forbidden desires and dreams. He tumbles out
of the room while the girl continues her friendly prattle.
Fish's thought is to find Cantley immediately in order to
explain the situation. Suddenly he encounters the Chief

who has been waiting for him, having planted the white girl

in Fish's room himself. As Fish is arrested for attempted

69

rape, his black neighbors hurriedly slam their doors in
his face, symbolically and actually disowning him. Fish
is alone.
The procedure at the station is farcical. The woman
shows no signs of having been raped, or even molested.
And soon Cantley comes to the point, demanding the checks.
Fish realizes that he will either have to give them up or
stay indefinitely in jail. Although he is totally isolated
from former friends and the rest of the black community,
he determines to keep his mouth shut--even if it means his
death. In this manner he seems to be asserting his man—
hood, but in reality he is instinctively fighting for his
life: to save it he must remain silent, for if the checks
materialize his death would be certain.
The next day he experiences the pangs of introspection,

finding a lack in himself:

There was some quality of character that the conditions

under which he had lived had failed to give him. Just

beyond the tip of his grasp was the realization that

he had somehow collaborated with those who had brought

this disaster upon him (326).
In his own people he finds no golden history to emulate, no
heritage to be proud of, no ideal to strive to attain, no
future to plan boldly for. All he is left with is a drab
present. He has no life except that in a poor imitation
of whites; he has no traditions or mores he can call his

owm. He is truly an outsider, bereft of a personal

coherent self.

70

Held illegally in jail, Fish is kept isolated from
all other prisoners although.his only crime had been "that
he did not know how to act in a reassuring manner toward
the white enemy" (331). Wright thus indicates his hero's
basic innocence. Fish has been incapable of coping with
the harsh white world because he ingenuously believed that
he could retain his self-hood while pretending not to. The
whites are too experienced to allow this sham.to pass,
seeing in FiSh the desire to be his own man. Unlike Tyree
who was beaten down, Fish at least always attempted to
fend off the defeat of his self-esteem. He wanted whites'
respect not just their collusion in crime. And the pathetic
irony of his situation is deepened when Fish recalls Tyree's
warnings about white women—-Fish has never so much as even
touched a white woman and yet he has been imprisoned for
having one in his room against his will.

The final six chapters of the book conclude the
story rapidly. Fish's sentence is extended for eighteen
months after he beats up a black stoolpigeon. Zeke's
second letter from Paris confirms Fish's plans to flee
to France. When he is released near his eighteenth birth-
day he assures Cantley that he "'ain't mad at nobody'"
(341). This scene almost ruins Fish who "acts" desperately
in his eagerness to escape the clutches of white Clinton-
ville. He gets the checks, some money from the office safe,

tells the dead Tyree, "'Papa, I'm leaving. . . . I can't

71

make it here'" (345), and sets out for the old world.

Commenting on Wright's resolution of The Long Dream, Donald

 

Gibson finds it "retrogressive" insofar as here "he returns
to his starting point, to 'Big Boy Leaves Home,' to the
most basic and least conscious response to fear precipitated
by confrontation with convention, flight."69 But for Fish
flight is his only alternative; powerless to survive con-
tinuous clashes with the Omnipotent Administrators because
of a lack of inner and communal resources to sustain him,
he must leave the field of battle, hoping for freedom else-
where.

On the plane in rather obvious irony a white second-
generation Italian reminisces over his father's statement
that "America was His Wonderful Romance" (347). When he
discovers that Fish is from the south he sympathetically
asks what life for blacks is like there. Fish lies,
unwilling to open his secret wounds to this stranger for
he "was not yet emotionally strong enough to admit what
he had lived" (347). So he assures the man that blacks
live just like anybody else, while brooding over the night-
mare that America had been for him. Noticing the contrast
between the man's white hand and his own black one, he
surreptitiously tries to cover his right black hand with
his left black hand to hide his "shameful blackness" (348).

In the final scene Fishbelly ponders the dream

images of his life. Realizing that he and the whites share

72

the same world, he knows nonetheless that his is a different
world because of his past:
He had fled a world that he had known and that had
emotionally crucified him. . . . Could he ever make
the white faces around.him understand how they had
charged his world with images of beckoning desire
and dread? Naw, naw. . . . No one could believe the
kind of life he had lived and was living (350).
He therefore, as an act of faith not as an act of deception,
decides to deny his world. He will thus be better able to
acclimate himself to a new world, and eventually perhaps
be accepted, be at home among people. This is his sweetest

dream, after all, that of becoming a person, one welcomed

by other human beings. Wright in The Long Dream is pro-

 

testing "against the injustice that destroys his spirit,
crushes his dignity."70
The tragedy in Fishbelly Tucker is his ruined poten-
tial. Fairly intelligent, endowed with his father's native
cunning, and overly sensitive, Fish is at the mercy of
his environment, especially because of this latter quality.
Through his perspicacity he was able as an adolescent to
see the significance of incidents surrounding his maturation,
grasping almost instinctively the implications of Tyree's
acting, Chris' death, his own identity crisis. He conse-
quently has the capacity to become a person, aware of
people's feelings and his effect on them. But this sensi-
tivity is also Fish's weakness, the Achilles' heel that

the whites irritate. His high strung, easily hurt psyche

can tolerate neither the whites' brutalities nor their

73

subtleties. Instead of reaching out to others Fish has
learned to focus on himself, aiding his own victimization.
Becoming so sensitive of his own needs and desires that he
lives solely for himself, he develops a neurotic person-
ality: fearful and envious of the whites, scornful and
exploitative of the blacks. Simultaneously, he adhors his
situation, hating himself, craving friends and understanding.
He tries against the odds to retain his self-esteem and
manhood but is forced to surrender them to survive. Compli-
cating this capitulation is his sensitivity: be continually
resents his inferior status and the necessity for role-
playing, realizing that no man should have to buy his life
with his emasculation. Fish is an unwilling victim, a
man on the prowl to regain selfhood.

In summary, The Long Dream is a parody of romance,
a tragedy in the ironic mode characterized by such demonic
imagery as the nightmare, the mob, the sacrificial victims,
the whores, and the fire that destroys. Because the novel
parodies romance its movement is analogous to and its content
often in conflict with this other mode.. That is to say,
the ironic hero goes forth into the world in quest of an
identity but instead of being successful, as he would be
in romance, he fails and is rejected by society. Further-
nmre, according to Frye, conflict is the archetypal theme

cfi'romance and The Long Dream operates on the same dialectic

 

Ci desire and reality found in both ritual and dream.

74

Translated into dream terms, the quest-romance is the
search for a fulfillment that will deliver it from the
anxieties of reality but will still contain that
reality. . . . Translated into ritual terms, the
quest-romance is the victory of fertility over the

waste land. Fertility means . . . the union of male
and female.7

Fish does not realize his dream, for the novel ultimately
is tragic irony, giving the reader "the sense that heroism
and effective action are absent, disorganized or foredoomed
to defeat, and that confusion and anarchy reign. . . ."72

As a result, at the end of the book, Fishbelly
Tucker, isolate, victim, and castrated man, is left with
the responsibility of continuing his existential search
for self. Because of the conditions in the United States,
Fish's initiation has resulted in alienation; the initiate
has become a victim through the rituals of sacrifice,
regression, and defeat. The dream ends in flight.

Other, poorer, blacks fled the nightmare of their
lives by migrating north, to the large industrial cities.
What happened to their dreams is illustrated by Wright in

Lawd Today and Native Son. The Long Dream and Black Boy,

 

 

in their detailed accounts of black male childhood in
Southern America, are the perfect preludes to these two
novels, since they help explain the behavior of men like
Jake Jackson and Bigger Thomas. Although Wright gives
the reader ample reasons for Jake's frustrations, he does
not dwell on his background (a Southern one); moreover,

Whight gives the reader very few specifics on Bigger's

75

early life, concentrating instead on the results of un-
remitting mistreatment. And so, it is with a better under-
standing of both their suppressed and expressed attitudes

that we turn to Jake and'Bigger, men born and raised in

the Deep South.

Chapter II, Footnotes

1. George E. Kent calls it "the racially most
repressive state in the union" in his essay "Richard
Wright: Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture,"
CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 323.

2. Constance Webb, Richard Wright: A Biography
(New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1968), pp. 205-206. See
also Ralph Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues," Shadow and
522 (New York: New American Library, 1966), pp. 89-104.

 

3. Webb, Biography, p. 409, n. 8.
4. Although it is true that Eva Blount in The
Outsider is an artist, she is not the central character

and serves often only to illustrate Wright's later contempt
for the way the communists treated him.

5. Richard Wright, Black Boy: A‘Record of Childhood
and Youth (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1945),
p. 40. (All subsequent page references to this work will
appear in parentheses in the text.)

6. Ihab Hassan, Radical Innoceage: The COntemporary
American Novel (New York: Harper andIRow, Publishers,
1966), PP. 34-35.

7. Ibid., p. 47.
8. 'Ibid., p. 60.

9. Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (New York: New
American Library, 1966), p. 95.

10. Kent, "Adventure of Western Culture," 324.

11. Robert Bone, "Richard Wright," Universit of
Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers, No. 74 (1969),
p. 14. (Hereafter referred to as Pamphlet.)'

12. See Chapter V for a discussion of this.

13. In contrast, see Guy de Bosschere's "Fishbelly
[the French title], de Richard Wright," Syntheses, No. 174

 

 

76

77

(Nov., 1960), pp. 63-66, in which he states "Par la magie
du style, par la suggestion verbale - violente et efficace

\

chez Wright - l'oeuvre accede a un haut degré d'art" (p. 66).

14. Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in AmeriCa (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 142, n. l.

15. Granville Hicks, "The Power of Richard Wright,"
rev. of The Long Dream by Richard Wright, Saturday Review,
XLI (Oct. 18, 1958), 13, 65.

 

16. Saunders Redding, "The Way It Was," New York
Times Book Review (Oct. 26, 1958), P. 4.

 

17. Northrup Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 147.

18. Except for the incident in which Wright spies
on their landlady who is a prostitute.

19. Russell Carl Brignano, Richard Wright: An
Introduction to the Man and His Works (Pittsburgh:
University of PittsburghiPress, 1970), p. 43.

20. Edward Margolies, The Art of Richard Wright
(Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969),
p. 158.

21. Ibid., p. 154.

22. Ibid., p. 149.

23. John A. Williams, Sissie (Garden City, N. Y. :
Doubleday Anchor Books, 1969), pp. ix-x.

24. Frye, AnatOmy Of Criticism, pp. 104-105.
25. Ibid., pp. 106-107.

26. Hassan, Radical Innocence: (The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 41.

27. Ipid., p. 43.
28. $2193! p. 59.
29. lpid., p. 106.
30. Richard Wright, The Long Dream (New York:
Ace Publishing Corporation, 1958), p. 59. (All subsequent

page references to this work will appear in parentheses in
the text.)

 

78

31. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 148.

32. Ibid., p. 148. This is the demonic imagery of
cannibalism found in the late phase of the ironic mode as
it returns to myth, "technically known as sparagaos or the
tearing apart of the sacrificial body, an 1mage ound in
the myths of Osiris, Orpheus, and Pentheus."

33. Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams,
trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1972), p. 213.

34. Is it possible that Fish is also the Fisher—
King, the wounded hero who must be healed if the wasteland
is to flourish again?

35. For an interesting discussion of the significance
of the name "Fish" as symbolic of the child's fear of
castration, see Margolies, The Art of Richard Wri ht,
pp. 152-153, in which he argues that FisHBeIIy 1s sexually
confused, connecting the fish with his father and mother;

and that Fishbelly's nightmares of white bellies are
symbolic of his fear of and desire for white women.

 

36. Like the pattern of seeing his parents through
"white eyes" and therefore despising them (see Chapter II,
p. 29).'

37. Redding, "The Way It Was," p. 4.

38. "What were the ways by which other Negroes
confronted their destiny? In the South of Wright's child—
hood there were three general ways: They could accept the
role created for them by the whites and perpetually resolve
the resulting conflicts through the hope and emotional
catharsis of Negro religion [Fish's mother]; they could
repress their dislike of Jim Crow social relations while
striving for a middle way of respectability, becoming--
consciously or unconsciously—~the accomplices of the whites
in oppressing their brothers [Tyree]; or they could reject
the situation, adopt a criminal attitude, and carry on an
unceasing psychological scrimmage with the whites, which
often flared forth into physical violence [Fish's potential
situation]." Ralph Ellison, "Richard Wright's Blues,"
Shadow and Act, p. 94.

 

39. AccOrding to Herbert Hill, an Uncle Tom is a
black man who behaves "without self—respect and dignity and
without racial pride in relation to white persons and white-
controlled institutions" ("'Uncle Tom,‘ An Enduring Myth,"
The Crisis, LXXII [May 1965], 289).

40. See Chapter V, p. 5.

79

41. Tryee regards himself aS'a "second-degree Uncle
Tom." I refer to William H. Pipes' Dream of an "Uncle Tom"
(New York: Carlton Press, 1967), in which he states, "I
accept wyatt T. Walker's definition of an 'Uncle Tom'--an
American Negro who survives (and even sometimes thrives)
by accommodation: playing the role of something less than
a man, as expected of him by the white man. But two types
of the 'Uncle Tom' emerge: the accommodating, Negro who
really feels innately inferior ('Uncle Tom' in the first
degree), and the Negro who knows he is not innately inferior,
but accommodates out of expediency ('Uncle Tom' in the
second degree)" (p. 6).

42. Wright, it has been suggested, has developed
the strong and strangely admirable Tyree in an attempt to
create a father image for himself in his fiction that he
lacked in his life (see, for example, Margolies, Art of
Richard Wri ht, p. 158).

43. According to Cleaver's interpretation, in a
class society the differentiation of roles is followed
by a sexual differentiation between members of the same
sex. When the societal roles are complicated by a racial
caste system, the results are simply more obvious. Thus
the thinkers, the powerful male members of the elite class
are designated the Omnipotent Administrators--in America,
the whites. The blacks take on the role of Supermasculine
Menial. The white woman, to compensate for the effeminate
characteristics of the Omnipotent Administrators, becomes
Ultrafeminine, relinquishing her own strength to the
black woman, the Strong Self-Reliant Amazon. The Super-
masculine Menial is attracted to the Ultrafeminine, the
symbol of beauty established by the elite for the whole
society (Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice [New York: A Delta
Book, 1968], PP. 178-190).

 

44. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 150.

 

45. According to Horney, the "idealized self" is
the product of our imagination, what our neurotic pride
says we on ht to be, the "real self" is the potential for
growth t at we can return to after conquering neurosis
(Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
prard Self-Realization [New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 1970], . 158 et passim). See also
Chapter III, pp, 120-1 2, 124, 125.

 

 

46. Ibid., p. 111.

47. Ibid., p. 157.

80

48. Ibid., p. 158, quoting from Soren Kierkegaard,
§icknessjgnto Death (Princeton: Princeton University
Press,‘l94l).

49. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, p. 45.

50. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 188.

51. gpga., p. 188.
52. gp;g,, p. 189.
53. 1219;! p. 190.
54. See Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 158.

55. Wright has given us a clue to explain this
behavior in his epigraph to Part II which states in part:
”The men are less fortunate . . . it is they who display
the celebrated racial inferiority complex in its purest
form, with its fantastic compensations in the form of
vanity." Taken from 0. Mannoni's Prospero and Caliban:
The Psychology of Colonization, the quote aCtually refers
to the girls and men of Madagascar--to the girls who can
"With a little coquetry . . . make a place for themselves
in the European community" and the men who "tend nowadays
to engage in the black market and other more or less
parasitic economic activities" (Trans. Pamela Powesland
[New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1964], p. 119). It is
certainly significant that a colonized people would manifest
the same behavior as a supposedly free people in a free
country. Fish's vanity is further illustrated, as Jake
Jackson's in Lawd Today, in his love of flashy clothes.

 

 

56. Because Tyree has been a successful confidence
man, he has attained stature among the black people; but
because he is to them an Uncle Tom, he is still, in the
words of W. E. B. DuBois, a "'White folks' nigger,’ to
be despised and feared" (quoted by Nancy M. Tischler,
Black Masks: Negro Characters in Modern Southern Fiction
[University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University
Press, 1969], pp. 41-42). Tyree is admired for his money
and power but unloved.

57. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 162.

 

58. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
Apps Man and His Works, p. 44.

81

59. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 154.
60. Ibid., p. 161.

61. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (New York: New
American Library, 1952), pp. 19-20.

62. From France, Marcel Lemaire observes that ac-
cording to Wright's world in The Long Dream, "if the black
man wants to make for himself a place in the sun he has to
adjust to an unjust situation; . . . if he wants to survive,
he must be mendacious, hypocrit [sic], smooth-faced,
knavish, cunning" ("Fiction in U.S.A. from the South,"

Revue Des Langues Vivantes, XXVII, 3 [1961], 247-248).

 

63. Williams, Sissie, p. x.

64. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 111.

65. Ibid., p. 18.
66. Ibid., p. 360

67. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, p. 47.

 

68. "After all, the problem is for the white
Southern people, who cannot reconcile themselves with their
own image as it is reflected in the fate they have designed
for the colored people, to get rid of their fear and hate,
to learn how to live with themselves. It is one of this
novel's virtues that it brings this moral problem fully to
light" (Lemaire, p. 248).

69. Donald B. Gibson, "Richard Wright and the
Tyranny of Convention," CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969),
356-357.

 

7o. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 151.

 

71. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 193.

 

72. Ibid., p. 193.

CHAPTER III

THE VICTIM AND THE REBEL

Lawd Today is Richard Wright's dialect novel,1
written from the perspective of a black man in Chicago in
the thirties. In this stylistically most experimental of
his novels, Wright attempts to encompass all the details
of a single day in the life of one man, Jake Jackson.

Using Dos Passos and Joyce as his models, Wright includes
newspaper clippings, junk mail, movie posters, and a radio
program to give the flavor of Jake Jackson's day. Un-
fortunately, however, the book is very unevenly written,
ranging from strong tight scenes (such as his bitter quarrel
with his wife, Lil) to long boring ones (such as the bridge
game which even includes diagrams of the hands). And where
Joyce used mythology to add depth to his modern Odyssey,
Wright is limited to the irony arising from juxtaposition:
he portrays his modern postal workers as latter-day slaves
to the U. S. Government, with a constant chorus in the
background celebrating Lincoln's birthday and the emanci-
pation of blacks. There is no doubt that the contrast makes

for bitter irony, but the technique fails to carry the
book.2

82

83

As a result of its many weaknesses, the critics have

not been particularly kind to Lawd Today—-nor have they

 

necessarily been in agreement as to its flaws and strengths.
A sampling: Nick Aaron Ford in his review remarks that
"Lawd Today is important only because it reveals another
chapter in the apparent decline of the once magnificent

talent of the late Richard Wright . . . Lawd Today is a

 

dull, unimaginative novel."3 Dan McCall, although impressed
with the book as an admirable beginning for a young writer,
condemns Wright's obtrusive irony and the "long, tedious
stretches of dialogue and detail that seem less like fiction
and more like sections of a tape recorder which Wright

turned on and forgot to turn off. . . ."4

Edward Margolies
calls the book "an interesting, ambitious, and lively
novel."5 Russell Brignano says that "as a work of art,

Lawd Today is beset by numerous shortcomings. The amount

 

of sheer dialogue is overburdening; the meager, often-
monosyllabic vocabulary is shallow and poorly descriptive;
and the unrelenting stress upon the smallest of details,
even to the extent of picturing the card distributions in

"6 Yet contemporary critics agree

bridge games, is tedious.
that the book is a valuable document in the study of Wright
since "it defines," according to George Kent, "at least an
essential part of black life, points up the importance of

the inscriptions from other writings as aids to understand-

ing his intentions, and enables us to see Wright examining

84

a Slice of black life practically on its own terms."7 This
finally, after all critical arguments are weighed, is the
book's single undebatable achievement: it is a vivid record
of black life.

For its strengths, therefore, we can look to the
incredible detail of black life so painstakingly recorded
by a newly emerging black author. Without a doubt it is
a graphic account of the anguish and latent violence of
the black man trapped in an America that doesn't want him.
Moreover, although the blacks presented may be despicable,
the novel's implied author asks us to sympathize with them,
asks us often to join in the moments of laughter and
extravagent humor that brings a feeling of relief from the
general tedium of these men's lives. 'And how can the reader
truly despise someone he is laughing with?

Subconsciously aware of their displacement, Jake and
his friends compensate for their empty lives by sporting
flashy clothes, drinking long and hard, laughing too loud
and too often, and spending their salaries on whores.8 As
Dan McCall says, "The book is a side show. It is a hope-

."9 It is

less, helpless carnival of brutalization. . .
a montage of colorful grotesqueries with Jake Jackson
spinning in the center of each scene. And although he
laughs, it is to forget, for his entire day is one of

disappointments and put-downs.

85

His first frustration is that of not being able to
finish an erotic dream (although this is a slightly amusing
difficulty to have, it is nonetheless tragic to him). The
rest of the day takes its cue from this disappointment.
Jake quarrels with his wife about another man and her health
(he himself had forced her to have an abortion years ago
and she still suffers from the hack job the incompetent
doctor did on her). He is forced to pay his barber an
exorbitant amount of money to smooth out his relations
with the Postal Board. At work he is disciplined for his
sloppy work. At the whorehouse he visits to unwind, he
is robbed, losing all the money he had borrowed earlier
in the day.

Jake Jackson is a man who never quite makes it--
although he likes to think of himself as a big spender and
man-about-town. His marriage belies his success with women;
he and his wife quarrel bitterly and seem only to get
satisfaction from hurting one another. Moreover, although
he has an opportunity of bettering himself by getting work
as a railroad conductor, he is unable to apply himself to
memorizing the train schedules. He is simply too easily
distracted by the pleasures of the body. A young man, he
is already a failure, having no real ambition that can be
translated into positive action.

And so, Jake Jackson smolders. He is sensitive

enough to feel a nagging dissatisfaction with himself and

86

his life. He has his pride too--mostly.in his appearance:
he owns ten suits and spends agonizing moments slicking
down his recalcitrant hair. A nobody in the outside world,
he constantly strives to be the boss Of his own apartment,
aching to be a force in his wife's life. "Again he searched
for something to say that would rouse her to a sharp sense
of his presence."10 Proud of his own job as a postal
employee, he scorns his wife's report that people are
starving in America. And yet he too wishes for a better
life; for example, always hopeful.of making it big, he
regularly plays the numbers--never winning, of course.11
Jake also refuses to identify himself with the poor blacks;
he sides with the successful ones as part of his delusion
over his self-image:

'Niggers is just like a bunch of crawfish in a bucket.

When one of 'em gets smart and tries to climb out of

the bucket, the others'll grab hold on 'im and pull

'im back. . ."(65).‘
To keep himself from having to think about the poverty of
his life, Jake throws himself into the colorful, noisy
world of the streets:

The clang of traffic, the array of color, and the
riot of flickering lights infected Jake with a nervous
and rebellious eagerness. He did not want to leave
all this life in the streets; he had a feeling that
he was missing something, but what it was he did not
know (119).

To forget about his nagging wife, his deadly job, and

chronic debts, Jake wastes his day by playing bridge and

87

drinking, occasionally lazily complaining about his fate as
a b1ack--"a nigger just stays a nigger" (122).

In a footnote in The Rhetoric of Fiction Wayne Booth

 

notes "how much more important titles and epigraphs take
on in modern works, where they are often the only explicit

commentary the reader is given."12

Written entirely with-
out authorial intrusion (except for the two scenes noted

where Wright gives factual information),‘Lawd Today instead

 

offers the reader several of these textual clues as to how
the implied author feels about his characters and their
lives. Each of the titles of the book's three sections
acts as a summary of the implied author's attitude toward
the life that Jake Jackson exhibits therein. Additionally,
the epigraph appearing at the beginning of each part
elucidates the significance of the chapter headings. To
illustrate,

Part I: Commonplace

. . . a vast Sargasso Sea--a prodigious welter of

unconscious life, swept by groundswells of half-

conscious emotion. . . .
Van Wyck Brooks' America's Coming-of-Age

 

Part II: Squirrel Cage

. . . Now, when you study these long, rigid rows of

desiccated men and women, you feel that you are in

the presence of some form of life that has hardened but

not grown, and over which the world has passed. . . .
Waldo Frank's Our America

 

Part III: Rats' Alley

. . . But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear
to ear.

T. S. Eliot's Wasteland

 

88

Part I, half the book, is appropriately labelled
"Commonplace." This word operates on two levels: the
incidents are commonplace events in Jake's existence; and
Jake's life is surely a commonplace one, void of promise
and satisfaction. In this section he makes the covenant
with himself to study for the new job with the railroad;
but, as he vows to improve, he seems to know that his are
hollow intentions. He quarrels with his sickly wife
about the same things they quarrel about day in and day
out: his razor blades, his stocking for his hair, her
illness, her conversations with the milkman, her cooking.
Jake is continually enervated by an excess of self-pity.
For excitement he plays the numbers and reads the paper.

Part II, "Squirrel Cage," discloses the boredom and
bodily exhaustion that emanate from working in the sorting
room at the Post Office. Taking no interest in their jobs
(and Wright makes it crystal clear as to why no one could
take an interest: it is incredibly tedious work offering
little or no sense of accomplishment), the men try to
forget by telling stories of their sexual escapades. It

13 At the same time

is a regular litany of sensuality.
they indicate just how much they hate their white bosses,
how much they hate the system that forces them to toss
letters into bins for a living and, more significantly,

that forces them to brag about their sexual prowess to

assert their manhood. They resent the whites but have

89

no solution for changing the power structure, for these
men are socially and politically impotent.
To release their frustration at being cooped up in

the Squirrel Cage, the men visit "Rats' Alley" in Part III.
The whorehouse is the highlight of their day; here they eat
and drink excessively while Jake throws money around to
prove his manliness. Jake is so enraptured by his own
success with the women that he fails to notice the theft
of his wallet. When he attempts to pay the bill he realizes
what has happened and almost as a relief starts a fight.
Thrown out of the establishment with his friends, he fails
to yield to depression:

He had exactly eight-five cents. One hundred dollars

one in one night! And I got to pay Doc.¥G§§ddififi__—

t at Wfiore! He straigHtEned, smiIed, and yelled to
the top of his voice:

'BUT WHEN I WAS FLYING I WAS A FLYING FOOL!‘ (219).

 

 

 

Unconsciously, Jake knows the danger of admitting his
shortcomings. He must maintain the fiction of himself as
a dauntless Dan Juan--otherwise despair would destroy him.
Once home, Jake retaliates against the world by
attacking his wife viciously, trying again to make an
impression on her, closing the day as he began it. Lil
defends herself with a chunk of broken glass and Jake
eventually passes out. The violence expressed in this
final scene indicates the extraordinary depth of Jake's
frustration. Superficially a happy-go-lucky, laughing

black man, Jake Jackson is in reality an embittered,

90

defeated slave, unable to find a viable mode of rebellion.
He is caught in a web of debt and unhappiness--the forgotten
failure in a land of opportunity.

But Jake and his friends have something to recommend
them: their zest and outrageous determination to have a
good time regardless of the consequences. The book lives
through their colorful language and bawdy behavior. Beaten
at the better things, they still know how to have a good
time. Although their finer impulses may have died and seen
at the end of a debauch their faces must express the utter
emptiness of desiccation and despair, these men daily give
it a go, trying their best to wrench some happiness out of

14 These are the black

a dreadfully disappointing life.
proletariat, the dispossessed who found freedom to be as
confining as slavery. Written from the viewpoint of the

masses, Lawd Today nonetheless lacks the commitment to

 

Marxism that Native Son contains. Moreover, the latent

 

violence of these postal workers is translated into action

in Native Son: there the slave learns how to rebel. As

 

George E. Kent observes,

and Today enlarges our perspective on Native Son,
for it creates the universe of Bigger ThomasIIn terms
more dense than the carefully chosen symbolic
reference points of Native Son. The continuity of
Wright's concerns stand [sic] out with great clarity
and depth. Running through all Wright's works and
thoroughly pervading his personality is his identifi-
cation with and rejection of the West, and his
identification with and rejection of the conditions
of black life. Lawd Today is primarily concerned
with the latter.lb

 

 

 

 

91

With the scenes set in Black Boy, The Long Dream, and Lawd

 

 

 

Today we are now ready to witness the terrible ordeal of a

black rebel in Native Son.

 

Native Son is Richard Wright's novel of outrage. It

is his bitter condemnation of the American mores and laws
that have ravished the Negroes' spirits since slavery. It
is also Wright's tribute to the Biggers he knew who refused
to knuckle under, who declared their frustration with the
world by engaging in crime and murder. With his anger never
far beneath the surface, Wright warns the world to expect
universal rebellion and violence from all its Biggers--its
downtrodden masses. Here is a man writing out of a personal
passion for justice, a man who knew victimization intimately-—
as a child in Mississippi and as a young man in Chicago during
the Depression. Although Wright would later receive inter-
national acclaim and prestige, he never forgot his people.
His work is evidence of this.

Native Son is the emotional autobiography of a man who

refused to be either a thing or a criminal. Bigger

Thomas forced recpgnition by an act of murder, Wright
by an act of art.

 

In his essay "How 'Bigger' was Born" (1940), Wright
discusses at length the bond between himself and Bigger.
Recalling no fewer than five Biggers that he has known,
Wright says of one, "he left a marked impression on me;

maybe it was because I longed secretly to be like him and

92

was afraid. I don't know."17 The Biggers that Wright
remembers stand out in his mind because they stubbornly
challenged the system that sought to "keep them in their
place." In their own desperate and often pitiful ways
they fought the status quo. This Wright admired.

Besides being based on autobiographical material,18
Native Son, like much of Wright's other work, contains a
mixture of two seemingly opposed philosophies, naturalism
and existentialism, and is permeated with a third, Marxism--
to its detriment, many critics feel. Whatever its flaws,
the book stands as an anguished cry of pain, a work of art
as expressive of its time as Picasso's Guernica. Although
no hint of the impending war appears in the novel, the
darker philosophical questions of what it means to be

human, of the origin of man's terrible loneliness, and

his willingness to inflict suffering on others are exposed
in Native Son. Man's eternal search for a way out of his
human dilemma appears here also in the guise of the Com-
munist Party. The only solution, however, as Bigger
discovers in the tormented hours before his execution,

is for each man to accept himself for what he is, tran-
scending the world's horrors and contradictions. Camus

says in The Myth of Sisyphus that "There is no fate that

 

cannot be surmounted by scorn" and that "One must imagine

19

Sisyphus happy." Native Son is the quest of Bigger Thomas

 

for this transcendence, for this state of being able to

93

assert life in the face of an irrational world that seeks
his soul; it is his journey into selfhood. As he goes to
his execution, one must imagine Bigger Thomas happy.
Bigger's totally modern search for self is analogous
to the ancient allegorical quest—romances that appear in
Christian and vulgar literature, whose "essential element
of plot" is adventure. And the "major adventure" in a
romance Frye labels its "quest," explaining that
The complete form of the romance is clearly the
successful quest, and such a completed form has three
main stages: the stage of the perilous journey and
the preliminary minor adventures; the crucial struggle,
usually some kind of battle in which either the hero
or his foe6 or both, must die; and the exaltation of

the hero.2

I am not suggesting that Native Son is a quest-romance; it

 

is more precisely an inverted romance, an ironic tragedy.21
Bigger's preliminary minor adventures prepare us
for his confrontation with his naked self. He skirmishes
with the rat and overcomes it.. He quarrels with his family
and his friends, asserting his right to be himself. He
kills a white woman in her own bedroom--his most signifi-
cant act since he frees himself from bondage by breaking
a potent taboo. He flees into the heart of darkness, the
Black Belt, to escape the police and is captured there.
From this point on in the book, Bigger flees back into
himself. The most crucial encounter occurs in Bigger's
mind as he struggles to accept himself while he is locked

up in jail. There, in isolation and anguish, he ponders

94

his deeds and motivation. Before dying he triumphantly
declares himself a murderer.

Although Bigger is victorious, he remains an ironic
hero since the evil he struggles against is identified with
society itself and his exaltation is purely a personal one.
As he seeks an identity he is, like the modern absurd hero,
"in spirit . . . Ishmael still, searching for a strayed,
runaway, or uncreated self. He becomes an alien in his

familiar land."22

Bigger engages in the Quest Absurd, a
situation in which
It is this real world which has become irrational
(unreal, a nightmare) . . . as exemplified in such
modern writers as William Faulkner, Wright Morris,
or J. D. Salinger.‘ And as the world of these
recent novelists has become more irrational, their
visions--the dreams of their searchers and seekers--
have become more rational, humble, and human.2
All Bigger wants is to be accepted as a human being, wishing
once and for all to shed his cloak of invisibility and to
be respected as a man among men. He succeeds in forcing
the world to admit his existence, but he comes into being
only as a criminal.

Native Son is a tragedy written in the ironic mode.

 

And as a proper tragic hero, Bigger is isolated from
society. But he might be more accurately called an agai-
2252 since the term "hero" carries with it an aura of
superiority that an ironic hero does not have; instead,

the ironic hero is inferior to us in power or intelligence,
and thus, to paraphrase Frye, when we watch an ironic

tragedy, we look down on a scene of bondage and frustration.24

95

This is the proper setting for absurdity. And Bigger Thomas
is an existential or absurd hero whose "adventures" consti-
tute a metaphysical quest for the meaning of existence--
his and, by implication, ours.
According to Frye, the archetypal theme of irony is

"the sense that heroism and effective action are absent,
disorganized or foredoomed to defeat, and that confusion
and anarchy reign over the world."25 Archetypally, then,
Native Son could be categorized under Frye's feurth phase
of satire, the ironic aspect of tragedy,26 since the "central
principle of ironic myth," according to Frye, "is best ap-
‘proached as a parody of romance: the application of
romantic mythical forms to a more realistic content which
fits them in unexpected ways."27

As a phase of irony in its own right, the fourth phase

looks at tragedy from below, from the moral and

realistic perspective of the state of experience.

It stresses the humanity of its heroes, minimizes the

sense of ritual inevitability in tragedy, supplies

social and psychological explanations for catastrophe,

and makes as much as possible of human misery seem,

in Thoreau's phrase, 'superfluous and evitable.‘

This iszghe phase of most sincere, explicit realism

 

 

 

Throughout most of the book, Wright explains Bigger's down-
fall in proletarian terms: the white capitalistic power
structure has alienated Bigger, forced him into criminal
activities. Society, therefore, is directly responsible
for creating this "monster." Bigger has been trapped in

an absurd environment much like Cass Kingsolving in William

96

Styron's Set This House on Fire which requires him to destroy
life in order to reaffirm its value.

In writing Native Son Wright began his examination

 

of Bigger Thomas from the outside, exploring Bigger's family,
his friends, and surroundings. And they were certainly
instrumental in forming him. But as he got deeper into
the character, he must have found that social and psycho-
logical explanations were inadequate.' There was more to
Bigger than the naturalists, communists, or psychologists
could explain. For Bigger, as Wright must have discovered,
was not satisfied to be labelled and forgotten. He was
rebellious enough to want to forge an identity out of his
black experiences, in spite of--or to spite-”SOCietY-
Wright, although he most likely did not know it at the
time, had created an existential hero, a metaphysical rebel.
Later, when asked to identify the source of Bigger's

alienation, Wright replied with a political explanation
that has overtones of Miller's absurd world in it. In
this 1940 essay Wright said that as far as he was concerned
Bigger "is a product of a dislocated society; he is a
dispossessed and disinherited man. . . ." Wright goes on
to identify himself with his creation.

He was an American because he was a native son; but

he was also a Negro nationalist in a vague sense

because he was not allowed to live as an American.

Such was his way of life and mine; neither Bigger nor
I resided fully in either camp.

97

As outsiders, living in no-manfs land, both Bigger and
- wright had unique perspectives on the American way of
life--a vantage point later put into words by another Wright

character, Ely Houston, in The’Outsider'.30

 

Since Wright's own view of life during the thirties
was strongly influenced by the Communist Party--as was the
thinking of many writers and intellectuals at that time--
his style of writing shows the mark of its spokesmen, the
proletarian novelists, who themselves drew on the realistic
and naturalistic traditions in literature to express party
dogma. Using detailed physical descriptions and concen-
trating on the common man as their subject, the communists
protested shrilly against the injustices inherent to a
capitalistic country. Meeting with these writers at the
Chicago John Reed Club, Wright became exCited by their
ideas and their passionate commitment to a new order. As
a black man, Wright says he "began to feel far-flung kin-
ships, and sense[d], with fright and abashment, the possi-
bilities of alliances between the American Negro and other
people possessing a kindred consciousness."3l.

Although Wright would eventually dissolve his
affiliation with the Communist Party in a public statement,
he never truly renounced his Marxist viewpoint. Even when
he broke with the Party in 1944 he still managed to convey
how strongly he had been attracted to its call to the

world's disinherited:

98

It was not the economics of Communism, nor the great
power of trade unions, nor the excitement of under—
ground politics that claimed me; my attention was
caught by the similarity of the experiences of workers
in other lands, by the possibility of uniting scattered
but kindred peoples into a whole. . . . It urged life
to believe in life. ‘

The bonds ran deep. And Wright never lost faith in his

vision of brotherhood. Later critics would see this

attachment to the ideals of communism as a watermark of

his work, arguing that Wright
in spite of the shifts in his formal political affili-
ations, was always essentially a Marxist thinker. . . .
He used Freud, for example, primarily to score Marxian
points, and even his later involvement with existential-
ism seemed to have political revolution as its basic
motive.33

Wright was encouraged to submit articles and poetry

to The Masses (later The New Masses), an organ of the Com-

 

 

munist Party. The fruit of this enthusiasm for his work
appears in the first collection of his short stories, Uncle

Tom's Children, printed in 1938, which shows Wright's strong

 

attachment to the Party. "Fire and Cloud" reveals Wright's
dream of unity between the lower classes of both races.
In this story the people, starving during the Depression,
show such strength of will in their togetherness that the
town's officials are forced to release supplies of surplus
food to them. The story closes with their assertion that
"'Freedom belongs t the strong!”34
In the book's last story, "Bright and Morning Star,"

Wright tries to illustrate his conviction that even the

most ignorant and poor black woman can become a vital force

99

in the cause of freedom. Although Aunt Sue is not a com-
munist, her son Johnny—Boy and his white girl friend Reva
are. When Johnny-Boy's life is endangered by the presence
of an anti-communist informer, it is Aunt Sue's down-home
intuition that tells her who the Judas is. Before the man
can report to his friends, Aunt Sue, winding sheet in hand,
shoots him dead. She and her son die slow and torturous
deaths at the hands of these people, but the comrades'
identities are kept secret since an old black woman has
seen the bright and morning star.

IroniCally, Wright's most successful and famous
proletarian work was not acceptable to the Communist Party.

Although Native Son fits the definition of a proletarian

 

novel as posited by Walter B. Rideout in his study The

Radical Novel in the United States, that is to say, a novel

 

written from the Marxist viewpoint,35 it was nevertheless
criticized by the communists for not following the party
line on the Negro question. With its publication, then,
Wright's love affair with communism began to pale. None-
theless, the book stands today as one of the better
proletarian novels to come out of the thirties. It suffers
like the others from its author's not so subtle proselyté
izing, but its strength evolves from the sheer horror it
can evoke in the reader's imagination. After Little Rock,
Detroit, and Watts, it can still kindle a flame of outrage.

And much of its effect is directly attributable to the

100

narrative techniques that Wright learned from other prole-
tarian writers like his use of realism, ironical juxtapo-
sition, and a proletarian point of view--that is, the novel
is told from the perspective of one of the masses.

Wright identified with these inarticulate masses who

are like the people in Winesburg, Ohio and Paterson in that

 

 

"the language fails them." Determined to speak for these
people struck dumb with poverty and hopelessness, he

intentionally wrote Native Son "so hard and deep that

 

[people] would have to face it without the consolation of
tears."36 To do this Wright employed the harsh style of
the realists and coupled it with the devastating attitude
of environmental determinism so prevalent in the natural-
istic novels of this century. Continually, Wright protests
against the dehumanizing effects of the white American
capitalistic system by illustrating the life of one of its
victims, Bigger Thomas. Unlike so many of the proletarian
novels that today seem to be nothing more than period
pieces, Native Son increases in relevance, owing in part,
interestingly enough, to the same techniques that have
tended to date the other radical novels.

Even Wright's use of realism seems only fitting.
For he is portraying the bleakness of Bigger's soul by
exposing the poverty of his outer life. In the book's open-

ing scenes, for example, Wright is at his dramatic best as he

101

vividly illustrates the impoverished lives of lower class
blacks who are forced to live on Chicago's South Side. As
a realist, Wright carefully delineates the details of slum
life, reminding the reader of Henry Roth's style in his
proletarian novel of an immigrant bOy in New York, Call It
In Chicago, as in all cities, ghetto life revolves
around the ubiquitous rats. And so, Wright begins his novel
with these uninvited guests. While his family watches in
fear, Bigger stalks a huge yellow-fanged black rat. Al-
though the rat is vicious and bold-~attacking Bigger on
the leg--he is nevertheless finally cornered and killed.
This sordid little drama effectively summarizes Native
Saala entire action for Bigger, like the rat, is black and
daring, striking out against a stronger foe. But he is
no match for the enemy. R. C. Brignano finds Bigger's
action in this scene "ironically symbolic [since later]
Bigger will assume the role of a hunted animal, and the
rat will be interchanged in the minds of the whites with

Negroes in general."37

Even Bigger unconsciously identifies
himself with the rat when he is running from the police.
Looking for a place to hide in the Black Belt, he sees a

rat slipping into a nearby building and gazes "wistfully

at that gaping black hole through which the rat had darted

to safety."38

He is jealous of the rat since he can find
no hole to lose himself in. Quickly, he is trapped and

captured--no better than an animal at bay.

102

It is this feeling of being treated like an animal,
of being kicked and beaten like an unwanted dog, that so
infuriates Bigger that he cannot function as an ordinary
human being. He is tormented by the vast distances between
his dreams and the world's reality; he is ripe for rebellion.
In 1951, Albert Camus seemed to speak for Bigger as he
studied the characteristics of the metaphysical rebel,
finding that

The first and only evidence that is supplied me,

within the terms of the absurdist experience, is

rebellion. Deprived of all knowledge, incited to
murder or to consent to murder, all I have at my

disposal is this single piece of evidence, which

is only reaffirmed by the anguish I suffer.

Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality,
confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible con-
dition. But its blind impulse is to demand order in
the midst of chaos. . . . It protests, it demands, it
insists that the outrage be brought to an end. . . .39

Where other men might have the comfort of family and friends,
Bigger is alone with his fear. Like most modern heroes
Bigger is an outsider, exemplifying with his life the harsh
philosophical truth that man is alone and that the death

of God goes without saying.

America has stolen Bigger's family from him--just
like she did to the blacks two hundred years ago to keep
those slaves from building strong family ties. Bigger's
father is dead, having been killed in a race riot when
his son was a young child. Bigger's mother is on welfare

and constantly troubled by a lack of money. Transplanted

from his native Mississippi, Bigger himself is unable to

103

stay out of trouble or find a decent job in the north. In
Chicago, he lives in one room with his mother and two
siblings, Buddy and Vera. The dreadful tension in this
family is evident from the conversation in the first scene.
As R. C. Brignano notes: "Quickly Wright sets Bigger apart
from the sharing of any warm and strong associations with
members of his own family and of his young gang companions."40
When Bigger teases Vera by swinging the dead rat in her
face, their mother responds bitterly, "'Bigger, sometimes

I wonder why I birthed you!'" (11). Although she claims to
have sacrificed her life for her son she shows him little
love or understanding. She has had a hard life. Obviously
bitter about her son's lack of ambition, she challenges

his manhood and sanity:

'We wouldn't have to live in this garbage dump if
you had any manhood in you. . . .'

'He's just crazy. . . . Just plain dumb black
crazy.‘

'Bigger, honest, you the most no-countest man I
ever seen in all my life!‘ (12).

This lack of affection in Bigger's family is quasi-
autobiographical: Wright's own strongly matriarchal and
highly religious family failed to give him a sense of
love or belonging. According to Wright's memories, his
family seems almost to have taken pleasure in squelching
his poetic nature.

And yet Bigger's family is not entirely to blame for

his bizarre behavior. After all, they too are victims--victims

104

of white capitalism and traditions. Through a steady
accretion of facts Wright compiles a brief that indicts
the white power structure for ravaging b1acks—-for destroy-
ing their lives, their families, their heritage.

By confining himself to presenting only Bigger's
point of view, Wright forces the reader to identify with
his hero. we see only what Bigger sees, hear only what

he hears.41

And it is shattering: the loveless home;
the friendless gang; the matter-of-fact murders and disposal
of bodies; the painful and frightening flight. Through it
all, Wright's careful, almost reportorial account even of
the most terrifying moments tends to understate the horror
of what is happening. This is a technique used often by
naturalistic writers, according to Walcutt: "where the
subject matter is sensational, the style is likely to be
restrained and objective."42
Another of Wright's trademarks as a craftman, his
heavy use of irony, was probably learned from the prole—

tarian school since it is also an outstanding character-

istic of their work. In Native Son these ironic contrasts

 

serve to point out the polarities of American life, the
differences between the elite and the poor, and the
discrepancy between what things should be and what they

43 Several ironies, for example, surround

really are.
Mr. Dalton, real estate broker and philanthropist. This

man charitably hires Bigger as his chauffeur to give him

105

a new start in life. But this man also owns the squalid
tenement building that Bigger lives in. During Bigger's
trial two interesting facts emerge about Dalton: one,

that he won't fight an old custom that keeps blacks locked
in the ghetto; and, two, that he won't lower the rents in
the ghetto because he thinks it would be unethical to
undersell his competitors (303f). Although he puts on a
good show of respectability and tranquility, he obviously
feels guilty: to salve his uneasy conscience, he regularly
donates money to Negro education and has provided ping

pong tables for the South Side Boys' Club.44

Completing
this rather obviously ironical situation is the information
that Bigger and his gang used the club as a meeting place
to plan their robberies.

Further ironic contrasts surround the descriptions
of the Thomas' apartment and the Daltons' home. Whereas
everything at Bigger's is loud, crowded, and collapsing,
at the Daltons' it is subdued, expansive, and expensive.
Naturally Bigger is ill at ease among such surroundings,
especially when Mary Dalton impetuously confronts him.
Bursting with tolerance and radical ideas, Mary threatens
Bigger with her impertinence toward her father and what
he stands for. Bigger immediately fears and hates her.
Ironically, she is one person who makes a sincere attempt

to understand him. But she is tactless. Not only do she

and Jan Erlone touch him frequently, but they make him sit

106

in the front seat of the car between them and take them to
a black restaurant where they all eat together--to Bigger's
shame.

In a somewhat heavy-handed ironic scene, Mary un-
consciously reveals the enormous chasm between the races
when she wistfully wonders aloud how blacks live:

She placed her hand on his arm.
'You know, Bigger, I've long wanted to go into those
houses . . . and just aaa_how your people live . . . I
want to know these people. Never in my life have I
been insIdE—of a Negro home. Yet they EEEE live like
we live. They're aamaa. . . . (70).
Indicative of their separation is her constant use of "you,"
"your," and "they"; Wright obviously had concluded that
Mary and her kind feel no emotional bond with blacks. In
fact, these intellectual liberals are twice removed from
Bigger, by race and by class. Wright seems to be trying
to destroy Once and for all the myth that America is a
classless society.

When Wright begins his narrative of Bigger's trial
he slips into the pitfall of preaching to the reader-~a
flaw seen in much proletarian writing. Up until this point
in the book Wright had allowed Bigger and the facts of his
existence to speak for themselves. But here Wright ap-
parently felt he could not rely on his reader's perceptive
abilities, so he steps in to gall him what the book has
been about. In his essay "How 'Bigger' was Born" Wright

mentions this impulse of his to explain but does not apolo-

gize for it, feeling in his own mind that it was necessary

107

to make his thesis obvious. This major stylistic flaw
weakens an otherwise devastating story.45
Through the mask of Boris Max, Wright protests the
oppressive conditions that prevent blacks from achieving
self-realization. According to Max, the communist spokes-
man, society is responsible for Bigger's becoming a
murderer. Therefore, as a product of a criminally negligent
capitalistic society, Bigger is blameless. Hugh Gloster

identifies this theme of oppression as the "all-pervading

thought of Native Son," the idea

 

that a prejudiced and capitalistic social order,
rather than any intrinsic human deficiency, is the
cause of the frustration and rebellion of under-
privileged Negro youth of America.46
To state it another way, Wright is illustrating Hassan's
concept of the rebel-victim, the innocent man victimized
by a guilty society. Amazingly enough, Wright has couched

a very modern idea in a proletarian novel.

While Wright was working on Native Son during the

 

thirties, the communists were rallying around the Negro
cause. Thus it is not surprising that Wright--himself
caught up in the communist struggle for civil liberties--
would paint the communists in a sympathetic light. In

Native Son the communists are more than eager to help

 

Bigger as a further excuse to blast the white power
structure, the bourgeois class. Although Wright tempers

his admiration of the communists by portraying them as

108

rather insensitive do-gooders, he does characterize them
as loyal, determined fighters of injustice. They don't
really know or understand Bigger but they fight diligently
for his rights. By 1940 Wright had already become dis-
enchanted with the Party, but he still seems to have had
some sort of faith in the integrity of its motives. After
all, Max's speech is an impassioned call for justice and
it is the only time in the book that a man—-black or
white--defends Bigger publicly. Wright had to have some
bond with this Party to portray such emotional force in
his communist spokesman-~to choose a communist as his
Spokesman.

In his discussion of Native Son as a proletarian

 

novel, Walter B. Rideout praises this intensity and for-
gives the book's weaknesses, saying that

The end of the book somes close to being a tract,

but it is saved by the emotional force of its
terrible warning . . . [Tlhe imaginative expansion

of the book . . . comes from the relating of the
truncated lives of Negroes in the United States to
those of all the other 'have-not's,‘ the humiliated
and despised, who are goaded on by the American Dream
and whose American Tragedy it is to be blocked from
the dream's fulfillment.47

It is this discrepancy between man's inner desires
and the world's realities that forces men into states of

alienation-~and Bigger to murder. Native Son is clearly

 

an ironic title for Bigger Thomas has no place in the sun
in America. He is an alien in his own land. He thinks

like the young Richard Wright in Chicago who resented being

109

yelled at by a Jewish shopkeeper and so instictively saw
his boss' yelling as a symptom of the woman's feeling of
racial superiority:
I reasoned thus: though English was my native tongue
and America my native land, she, an alien, could
Operate a store and earn a liging in a neighborhood
where I could not even live.
Although Wright later realized that he had misinterpreted
Mrs. Hoffman's motives, he knew that his reaction was
typical of oppressed blacks and an appropriate one in many
other instances in America. He vowed to battle the world's
genuine injustices with words:
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for
an echo; and if an echo sounded, no matter how
faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march,
to fight, to create a sense of the hunger for life

that gnaws in us all, to keep alivigin our hearts a
sense of the inexpressively human.

Although Native Son is, without question, a proletar-

 

ian novel, it remains something more. In this powerful
novel Wright straddles the opposing forces of naturalism

and existentialism, wearing the boots of a Marxist. At
first Bigger Thomas seems to be at the mercy of his environ-
ment, determined by nature and society to become a killer.
But Bigger, using sheer will, manages to transcend his

world to accept himself for what he is and to accept the

 

consequences of what he has done. Underlying and somehow

 

strangely supporting this amazing transformation is
Wright's Marxist conviction that the revolution of the

masses is inevitable, imminent, and justified. This

110

movement or change in ideology has been observed by Robert
Bone in an essay on Wright, in which he says that

The novel moves, in its denouement, toward values
that we have learned to recognize as existentialist.
Having rejected Christianity and Communism Bigger finds
the strength to die in the courageous acceptance of
his existential self: 'What I killed for, I‘am!'

In embracing his own murderous instincts, howgver,
Wright's hero is compelled to sacrifice other and
perhaps more basic values. He has established an
identity through murder, but that identity, by virtue
of its horror, has cut him off from the human com-
munity of which he longs to be a part. That is the
meaning of Max's profound revulsion in the final
scene. 0

This interpretation of Bigger as an existential hero is
further corroborated by Donald B. Gibson in his essay
"Wright's Invisible Native Son."51 For as Wright matured,
his work more and more invited comparisons to the French
existentialists instead of the proletarian novelists.

Native Son, therefore, stands as a watershed between these

 

two dominant philosophical influences on Wright's thinking.
Given little credit by certain of his peers for being
comfortable with the abstruse and varied tenets of exis-
tentialism, Wright nonetheless was able to draw on the
horrors of his own life and his extensive readings to

52

create a number of existential heroes.

As I read it, then, the theme of Native Son is the

 

quest for identity, the self-realization of a personality,
the growth from neurosis to joyful self-actualization.
With skill, Wright moves his character out of a deter-

ministic situation into an existential one, simultaneously

111

protesting against a society that forces men to crime in
order to express themselves. To appreciate the unity of
Native Son it is necessary, therefore, to establish the
relationships in it between naturalism and existentialism,
two such opposing philosophies.

Since both philosophies revolve around a concept
of determinism, this is a good place to start. As the

major theme in naturalism, determinism carries, according

 

to Walcutt, "the idea that natural law and socioeconomic
influences are more powerful than the human will."53 Con-
versely, in existentialism, it is precisely the human
element that is the stronger. Man alone must create him-
self; in fact, he has to, he has no choice. As Sartre

describes Mathieu in The Age of Reason, he was, like all

 

men, "condemned forever to be free."54 Naturalism, then,
can be seen as the obverse side of existentialism.
On the naturalistic side of the coin are such books

as Studs Lonigan and An American Tragedy. Because of

 

 

environmental factors he can neither control nor avoid,
Studs Lonigan, a sensitive and rather poetic young man,
is doomed to failure and an inglorious death. Similarly,
Clyde Griffiths, attempting to improve his impoverished
life, is predestined by circumstance to social ostracism
and death row. On the existential side are works like

Caligula and The Age of Reason where both Camus' and

 

Sartre's protagonists recognize their total freedom and

112

the necessity of creating their own values. For Caligula
the rest of the world is simply his instrument for carrying
out his plan to live by absolute logic. For Mathieu,
freedom is so dear that he cannot make commitments to
anyone but himself:

He had never been able to engage himself completely

in any love-affair; or any pleasure, he had never

been realy unhappy: he always felt as though he

were somewhere else, that he was not.yet wholly

born. He waited.55

Between the two extremes of absolute determinism

and absolute freedom stands Native Son. Bigger is born

 

poor and black in a country that puts a premium on being
wealthy and white. Naturalistically, this means that
Bigger is predestined to become a pariah, a ne'er-do-well,
and, climactically, a murderer. But Hugh Gloster thinks
as I do that "the book seeks to show that the individual's
delinquency is produced by a distorting environment rather
than by innate criminality."56 Therefore, if Bigger can
transcend his environment, rise above the pressures of

the slum, he can create himself anew. Naturalistically
this is inconceivable--existential1y, it is not only
possible but unavoidable for a man to continually create
himself.57 But in order for Bigger to become aware of

his own potential for growth and self-determination, he
must first rebel. He must reject his slavery and affirm

himself. As Camus says in The Rebel,

 

113

The movement of rebellion is founded simultaneously
on the categorical rejection of an intrusion that
'is considered intolerable and on the confused
conviction of an absolute right which, in the
rebel's mind, is more precisely the impression that
he 'has the right to. . ...'58

At the same moment the rebel affirms a yes and a no, he
begins to think, to consider, to become aware of himself:

Awareness, no matter how confused it may be,
develops from every act of rebellion: the sudden,
dazzling perception that there is something in man
with which he can identify himself, even if only
for a moment.59

In his Narrative Frederick Douglass records the
epiphany he experienced having actually resisted a beating
by his overseer, recalling that

This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning point
in my career as a slave. It rekindled the few
expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me
a sense of my own manhood. It . . . inspired me
again with a determination to be free . . . I felt
as I never felt before. It was a glorious resur-
rection, from the tomb of slavery, to the heaven of
freedom. My long-crushed spirit rose, cowardice
departed, bold defiance took its place; . . . the
day had passed forever when I could be a slave in
fact.60

Once Bigger rebels, he unleashes, in Camus' words, "a

raging torrent"61

since he is no longer a slave but a
free man in search of his soul. He has broken the spell
of determinism.

The same tension between intention and reality that
existentialists after Camus have called "the absurd"

occurs also in naturalism. According to Walcutt's inter-

pretation of literary naturalism, this conflict occurs

114

because man is torn between defying nature through biologi-

cal competition, and submitting to nature, dissolving into

 

apathy, failure, or death. Naturalism faces the unre-
solvable "tension between the ideal of perfect unity and

"62 (Compare Camus' state-

the brutal facts of experience.
ment that "The absurd is born of this confrontation between
the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."63)
Man desires to be at peace with nature (intention) but the
harsh world precludes this (reality). To survive in this
state of tension, Bigger is forced to rebel. In rebelling
he moves from determinism to freedom.

As Wright guides his hero through the rites of
passage from determinism to existentialism, he transforms

his proletarian novel into a very modern existential novel.

Donald B. Gibson summarizes this transition in Native Son

 

in a key paragraph in his essay "Wright's Invisible Native
Son": i

I do not want to argue that Wright was not strongly
influenced by American literary naturalism:
certainly he was. But he was not as confined

by the tradition as has been generally believed.

If my thesis about Native Son is correct, then
Wright is not an author whose major novel reflects
the final phases of a dying tradition, but he is
instead one who out of the thought, techniques and
general orientation of the naturalistic writers
developed beyond their scope. Native Son . . .
looks forward rather than backward. It Is a
prototype of the modern existentialist novel and

a link between the fiction of the 1930's and a good
deal of more modern fiction.64

 

 

By the end of this extraordinary novel, Bigger is

convinced of his absolute freedom. He denies that any

115

outside force is responsible for him. He refuses all
available scapegoats, neither cursing God nor society.
He goes to his death proud of his accomplishments. Although
he does not know it, he has realized Camus' assertion that
"'man, without the help of the Eternal or of rationalistic
thought, can create, all by himself, his own values.”65
Bigger's success derives from an act of pure violence,

another intersection of naturalism and existentialism in
Native Son. Violence rages in many forms through most
naturalist literature where sheer animal survival is the
key activity. To quote Walcutt:

Animal survival is a matter of violence, of force

against force; and with this theme there emerge

various motifs having to do with the expression

of force and violence and with the exploration of

man's capacities for such violence.
Existentialism also explores man's capacities for violence.
For violence is, indeed, as Hassan observes, the "ultimate
form of introspection" where the hero has recoiled utterly
against himself, bidding permanent adieu to society.67
Metaphysical rebellion begins with protest against man's
situation. It leads to the deification of man; God's order
is replaced by man's, often through violence and crime.68

Although superfically the murders Bigger commits

seem to stem from an animal instinct to survive, a natu-
ralistic reaction, they are in truth caused by more complex

impulses. Since each woman irritates him, and each manages

to put him in a vulnerable position, Bigger is himself

116

convinced that he has killed to protect himself. It isn't
until much later that he realizes that other factors were
involved:

'For a little while I was free; I was doing some-

thing. . . . 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' (328).
Bigger's lawyer, Boris Max, also interprets his first
murder as a positive act, calling it "'the most meaningful,
exciting and stirring thing that had ever happened to
him'" (364). He concludes that Bigger has accepted these
violent acts because they made him free, made him feel
that his decisions and actions "carried weight." For
Brignano,

The 'act of creation' that Bigger sees in his quasi-

accidental killing of Mary Ea creative. It raises

him, and with him his Negro-ness, from the level

of obscurity to the realm of recognition. He ac-

complishes alone something sensational. In so doing,

he projects his now unavoidable presence into the

white world. His satisfaction is, of course,

perverse; but, Wright implies, it is legitimate--

the logical outcome of an acknowledged release

from a consciously subservient group.6

One existential aspect of Bigger's personality that

wright must have recognized very clearly is his sense 0f
alienation from the rest of the world. It is an alienation
that Wright himself often experienced—-as a child and as a
man. Both Wright and Bigger felt alienated from their own

families. Both were rebellious, alienated by status and

personality from other people. Although Wright overcame

117

his social alienation and Bigger never did, both men did
share a lessening of self-alienation.

Bigger's alienation identifies him with several
contemporary fictional hero types. He is similar to James
E. Miller's "alienated hero" who suffers a "severe sickness
of the soul--a spiritual nausea"; he is in opposition to
the world.70 He also resembles David Galloway's "absurd
hero" because he accepts his absurd condition and "makes

it his God"; his existential leap leaves him content to

be a murderer. He has formulated his own values.71

Further,
his situation is analogous to Richard K. Barksdale's "anti-
hero" who is alienated from his culture and society. He
has no purpose or power; his fate is martyrdom and defeat.72
Bigger, however, is defeated only in society's eyes. He
is, after all, condemned to die as a murderer; but this
so-called defeat is really a victory for Bigger who has
rejected this world's ethical code. Closest of all the
heroes is Hassan's anti-hero, the "rebel-victim." Bigger
is victimized by society, but he rebels against this con-
dition, and, thrown entirely upon his own resources, suc-
cessfully creates an identity for himself.73

The source of the term "alienation" lies with the
German philosopher, Georg Hegel, who believed the phenomenon
to be an ontological fact. "Alienation, in its original

connotation, was the radical dissociation of the 'self'

into both actor and thing, into a subject that strives to

118

control its own fate, and an‘object which is manipulated
by others."74 Alienation was the inescapable dualism of
the "I" shaping itself and the "me" being shaped by others.
For Hegel the principle of action was the key to overcoming
this dualism; however, his description never developed
beyond abstractions. Bruno Bauer contended that the solu-
tion was to discover the real motives behind human actions
and thus overcome dualism through self-consciousness.
Ludwig Feuerbach felt all alienation stemmed from religion
which taught that all good in the world was transcendent,
apart from men; the solution, therefore, lay in returning
the divine to the human. But Feuerbach also talked only
of the abstraction Man. Finally, Karl Marx located alien-
ation in something specific and concrete: work. Man,
according to Marx, has become nothing more than a commodity
in the organization of labor; he has become an object
directed and used by others and therefore he has lost his
sense of self.75 To combat this capitalistically induced
alienation the system itself must be overturned, bringing
man back into a sense of identity and feeling of personal
worth. This idea in Marx's thinking has been hidden by
the historical concept of the man, but is currently being
studied and revived; it is seen as one of the most basic
statements about the sociological condition of man's

current alienation.

119

Kenneth Keniston, in his landmark essay "Alienation
and the Decline of Utopia," speaks of the gap between man's
aspirations and the world's actualities as the cause for
alienation.76 Richard K. Barksdale, in his discusSion of
alienation and the anti-hero, lists four reasons for the
alienation in modern America: (1) the gap between the great
"American dream and the ugly historical fact"; (2) the fact
that "the power and the glory now belong to the machine";
(3) the fact that the "great society" is continually con-
fronted by "the threat of mass annihilation through nuclear
war"; (4) the existence of the "pseudo-Eden" created by
what he terms "Madison-avenueism."77 Sidney Finkelstein,

in his book Existentialism and Alienation in American

 

Literature, comments on the Negroes' estrangement in the
United States and their portrayal as sub-human creatures
in literature and journalism.

As long as a mass of white people conceive whatever
minimal security they think they have as resting on
the secondary status of the Negro . . . this 'monster'
image will emerge as a product of their own alienation.
People who have essentially the same hopes, feelings
and potentialities as they, who should be seen as
human kin, are seen as fearsome and alien.

The alienation felt by an exploiter for the
exploited can be given ideolical support, like
theories of the alleged inferiority of Negroes or
'strangeness' of Jews. But alienation itself is
psychological and self-divisive, a projection by
the hater upon others of the image of the inhuman
practices to which he himself feels driven.

Since each discipline has certain valuable insights

to offer for a more complete understanding of this tortured

120

man, Bigger's alienation can be viewed as a psychological,
sociological, and philosophical phenomenon.

As we have seen from Karen Horney, one cause of self-
alienation is the conflict in a neurotic person between the
actual and the idealized self.79 The neurotic loses the
feeling of being in touch with himself, of being in control
of his life. Bigger, trying to live up to the idealized
self patterned after the white man's standards of beauty
and success, cannot help but despise his own only too-
lacking actual self. He cannot tolerate his feelings of
impotence. As a result he drives himself to the extreme,
the point of self-alienation.

Afraid to fully admit his truly dreadful situation,
Bigger has built a protective wall around himself. Like
Fishbelly, Bigger prefers to live on the surface of life.
Not only is it simpler but it is safer. Both men com-
partmentalize their experiences, allowing only tolerable
thoughts to emerge, a phenomenon directly attributable to
their neuroses which, according to Horney, "lower the
threshold of awareness of self."80 Since Bigger is under
the controls of his "shoulds"--the demands from his
idealized image of himself--he cannot afford to recognize
his shortcomings and failures. He uses this device to
prevent the "upsurge of self-hate which otherwise would
follow a realization of 'failure'. . . ."81 Although this

repression allows people like Bigger to avoid life's

121

harsher realities, it really only serves to further increase
the neurotic's alienation from self:

At the core of this alienation from the actual

self . . . is the remoteness of the neurotic from
his own feelings, wishes, beliefs, energies. It is
the loss of the feeling of being an active determining
force in his own life. It is the loss of feeling
himself as an organic whole.82
Faced with his own inadequacy as a black man in a white
society, Bigger has suppressed the conditions of himself
and his family so he doesn't lash out and kill indiscrimi-
nately (13f). Besides hating himself, he hates his family
because he is "powerless to help them" (13).

Bigger's loss of self resembles Fishbelly's in that
it is a subtle process wearing him down gradually like
Blake's "invisible worm that flies in the night." And,
according to Horney, there are four major contributors to

this alienation of self in a neurotic. The first is the

compulsive nature of a neurosis. The person is deprived

 

"of his full autonomy and spontaneity." Secondly, the
person becomes entrapped by his "shoulds." "In other words,
the tyranny of the should drives him to be something dif-
ferent from what he is or could be."83 Third, neurotic
paida keeps him ashamed of his real and actual selves
(Kierkegaard's "despair of not wanting to be oneself,"

according to Horney). "Finally, there are active moves
"84

 

against the real self, as expressed in self-hates.
Bigger's self-hate is evident in the scenes where he

is with Mary Dalton and her lover, Jan Erlone. These two

122

made him feel his black skin by just standing there
looking at him. . . . He felt he had no physical
existence at all right then; he was something he
hated, the badge of shame which he knew was attached
to a black skin (67).
This sudden feeling of self-hate is induced by whites--
people who have taught others tb despise themselves because
of skin coloring.
A second way to approach Bigger's alienation is
through sociology since he suffers from the five main
components of alienation as identified by Melvin Seeman:

normlessness, powerlessness, meaninglessness, social

isolation, and self-estrangement.85 Normlessness is

 

comparable to Durkheim's concept of anomie, the state in
which a man experiences uneasiness and anxiety, a feeling
of pointlessness or that no goals exist. Beyond his
disquietude about daily life, Bigger has forebodings about
the future, fearing that eventually he will lose control
and strike out at society. Recognizing that he is not in
control of his fate, he feels helpless in the face of the
rest of the world; for example, the welfare agency has
threatened to cut off the relief checks if Bigger refuses
to take the job at the Daltons':
Yes, he could take the job at Dalton's and be
miserable, or he could refuse it and starve. It
maddened him to think that he did not have a wider
choice of action (16).

To compensate, he and his friends turn not only to violence

but to a milder form of rebellion, that of role-playing.

123

Pretending to be white, they not only mock the whites, but,
sadly, themselves.
At the book's beginning, as I have suggested, Bigger

is pgwerless to control his own fate. Kept in check by

 

unwritten white laws that forbid him from living outside

the black belt, Bigger cannot break out of his crippling
environment. Hampered by an inadequate education and lacking
specific goals, Bigger is also an alumnus of reform school.
Since he has no skills valued by society, he is forced to
accept the position of chauffeur the welfare agency assigns
him to.

Out of this feeling of pawerlessness evolves a

 

sense of meaninglessness. To compensate, Bigger indulges

 

in activities that stimulate his senses: sex and drinking.
But his sex with Bessie is without love and his drinking
without joy. Ultimately his senses become deadened, a
welcome relief to a man trying to forget his misery.
Further outcomes of Bigger's inadequacies are his

social isolation and self-estrangement. According to

 

 

Seeman and Dean, social isolation is the condition in which

 

a man rejects society's goals and beliefs, often innovating
asocial means to realize his own goals. Bigger hasn't
exactly rejected society's goals; more precisely, he has
been prevented by society from participating in its mean-

ingful activities. He too would like to have money, status,

124

and an interesting job. But he isn't allowed to. So
Bigger turns to crime, an asocial activity, to obtain
fleeting financial security.

Of all the types of alienation, certainly the most

horrifying is self-estrangement, the condition, in Fromm's

 

terms, in which the "'person experiences himself as an

"86

alien.‘ A man suffering from self-estrangement is less

 

than he ideally should be; he has no pride in himself; his
work has no meaning; and he is incapable of finding any
self-rewarding activities to engage in. Bigger Thomas

is just such a victim of self-estrangement, alienated from
himself as a result of societal influences and pressures.
He is bitterly ashamed of himself. He has no "coherent
sense of self."87 He has lost his identity which "depends
upon the awareness that one's endeavors and one's life
make sense, that they are meaningful in the context in
which life is lived . . . [Identity] is a sense of whole-
ness, of integration, of knowing what is right and what

is wrong and of being able to choose."88 As a self-
alienated person, Bigger continually endures the agonies
of what could be called an "identity crisis." Since he
doesn't know who he truly is, and the world tells him he's
a nobody, he represses disagreeable events in order to
have the will to survive. As a neurotic, he is forced

to reject his real (and actual) self in favor of his

idealized self.

125

To cope with stressful situations, Bigger instinc-
tively blots them out. This blotting out or blindness

becomes one of the book's major motifs.89

It appears in
Bigger when he does not want to perceive the truth about
himself. According to Horney this is a fairly common
neurotic symptom.

As a protection against this terror [of being
oneself] the neurotic 'makes himself disappear.’ He
has an unconscious interest in not having a clear
perception of himself--in making himself, as it
were, deaf, dumb, and blind. Not only does he blur
the truth about himself but he has a vested interest
in doing so--a process which blunts his sensitiveness
to what is true and what is false not only inside but
also outside himself.9

Bigger's fragile equanimity cannot tolerate a conscious
recognition of his victimization; although he occasionally
dips into the realities of his actual self and thinks
about his plight, confessing, for example, to Gus that he
often feels like he's "'on the outside of the world peeping
in through a knothole in the fence'" (23). He is, after
all, drawn inexorably to the sore that festers in him:

the inequality between the races that forces him to be

‘ a despised outcast. Because of this fascination with

the cancer in his soul, Bigger has premonitions that
"something awful's going to happen" to him (23). It is

no wonder that he tries to blot out people and events that
conflict with his inner world.

The philosophical explanation for Bigger's alienation

is found in existential literature. According to Camus,

126

man's absurd condition arises from the clash between inten-
tion and reality; in other words, between man's inner

desires and the negative world forces.91

Bigger himself
is only too well aware of the absurd. For him, it is the
white world in particular that collides with his blackness
reminding him of the "divorce between man and his life,
the actor and his setting,"92 that causes him to feel
alienated.
'Them white boys sure can fly,' Gus said.
'Yeah,‘ Bigger said, wistfully. 'They get a chance
to do everything' (19).
Although Bigger consciously experiences alienation only
when he is confronted by the absurd, he is in truth
inherently alienated, for man's alienation is an ontologi-
cal fact according to Camus and David Galloway. Man is
not alienated because he is faced with a specific set of
noxious or unbearable circumstances, but because he is
human. As Galloway writes, alienation
is the fate of any and all men who think and feel
with any intensity about their relationship to the
world which surrounds them. Therefore man does not
become alienated (the word itself ceases to have
connotations of 'process'): alienation is his
birthright, the modern, psychologically colored
equivalent of original sin.—
Bigger is a rebel because, like the other absurd
heroes of the twentieth century, "he refuses to avoid
either of the two components on which absurdity depends":

94

intention and reality. Instead of turning away, he

challenges the absurd condition. "The theme of permanent

inher
becau

' l
(Ha.

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the i

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127

revolution is thus carried into individual experience.
Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is,
above all, contemplating it."95

Of great value in understanding the philosophical

makeup of Bigger Thomas is Ihab Hassan's Radical Innocence.

 

Within this essay on contemporary literature Hassan expands
on his concept of the "rebel-victim," the existential hero
who rebels against society and yet is still victimized by
it. He is marked by a "radical innocence." Hassan explains
that the anti-hero's innocence is "radical" because it is
inherent in his character" (radical = root), and also
because it is "extreme, impulsive, anarchic, troubled with
vision."96 His innocence derives from the Eternal Yea,
the inner impulses of man that confront the outer realities
of the world:
It is the innocence of a Self that refuses to accept
the immitigable rule of reality, including death, an
aboriginal Self the radical imperative of whose free-
dom cannot be stifled . . . [Tlhe innocence we speak
of also has a divine element in it; has, like
Dionysus, that inner energy of being, creative and
sacrificial.97
The concept of the existential hero's basic innocence is
further supported by James E. Miller who believes that the
hero is alienated from an irrational world gone-crazy.98
Since the irrationality lies in the world and not in the

hero, it is the world itself which is the villain in the

drama. But predictably it is the anti-hero who is doomed

128

to failure and censure. He must then be admired for
embracing a fight he cannot hope towin.99

Another critic who has entered the struggle to define
the existential hero characterizes the Dionysian principles
mentioned by Hassan as negative. Richard Lehan, instead
of seeing the anti-hero's activity as positive and divine,
sees it as destructive. He blames the demise of the
Apollonian principles (civilizing, measured, sublime) on
Nietzsche's vision of the darker Dionysian forces (chaotic,
primordial, orgiastic). For Lehan the existential quest
is demonic and the existential hero is an inverted Christ
figure.100 The hero destroys or sacrifices himself by
affirming his own identity. According to Lehan's interpre-
tation, Camus' Meursault and Dostoievski's Kirilov "die so
that others may understand the nature of absurdity."101

An absurd hero, a rebel, a man in search of an
identity--Bigger Thomas is an existential hero and Native
gap the record of his quest. Because Bigger is searching
for an identity, a very private, introspective quest, his
activity removes him from the rest.of the world. Once he
has murdered, fled and been captured, Bigger must contem-
plate in isolation what he has done and discover its
meaning for him. He must turn in upon himself, dwelling
there until he can wrench an identity out of his spiritual
anguish. No one can help him. Furthermore, as Hassan

has noted,

129

In its recoil the modern self has once again dis-
covered that all truths must be bloody and personal
truths, that is, experienced in anguish and action.102

 

Bigger is the anti-hero, the man whose search for "freedom
and self-definition" leads him to an ultimate alienation
from the world.103 As an outsider forced to create his
own values, Bigger simply continues the pattern of his
life since he has never really been a part of this world.
He has been isolated from whites because of his color and
alienated from blacks because of his rebellious nature--
his violence is regarded as dangerous by the black com-
munity eager to continue accommodating the whites. The
"novel reflects . . . the isolation of the Negro within
«104

his own group and the resulting fury of impatient scorn.

Although Bigger may be isolated, he has not intended

 

himself to be (witness his sad. strained relationships
with his friends and Bessie: unsatisfactory, but the only
contact with other people he could manage). When he said
"no" to his bondage, he was speaking for all the world's
Biggers. "When he rebels, a man identifies himself with
other men and so surpasses himself, and from this point
of view human solidarity is metaphysical."105 Unable to
tolerate his spiritual oppression and anonymity any longer,
he lashes out in the only way he knows.106 He tells Max,

'1 hurt folks 'cause I felt I had to; that's all.

They was crowding me too close; they wouldn't give

me no room. . . . I was always wanting something

and I was feeling that nobody would let me have it.

So I fought 'em. I thought they was hard and I

acted hard. . . . But I ain't hard even a little
bit' (388).

130

Bigger seems from this passage to be truly one of Camus'
innocent murderers who thwart violence with violence.107
What Bigger is unable to convey to Max is that he,
like all the rebels, speaks for the community of man:
He had lived outside of the lives of men. Their modes
of communication, their symbols and images, had been
denied him. Yet Max had given him the faith that at
bottom all men lived as he lived and felt as he felt
(386).

As Camus concludes in The Rebel, "the freedom to kill is

 

not compatible with the sense of rebellion" since "I have

need of others who have need of me and of each other."108

Therefore, Bigger himself must give up his life for those

he took. Otherwise, "From the moment you accept murder,

even if only once, you must allow it universally."109
And so, Bigger dies to reaffirm the value of life.

It follows that if life had no value he would not be asked

to give up his for taking the lives of others. In effect,

his death is a symbolic gesture reasserting his faith in

the community of man. Although he does not want to die,

he understands that he must now sacrifice himself as he

had earlier sacrificed Mary and Bessie. "If the individual,

in fact, accepts death and happens to die as a consequence

of his act of rebellion, he demonstrates by doing so that

he is willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of a common

good which he considers more important than his own des-'

tiny."110

131

Bigger has been driven into a corner like a trapped
animal; there society tantalizes him with its rewards but
refuses to let him out to share them. To obtain what most
people take for granted, independence and self-identity,
Bigger has been forced to kill. Before his murderous acts
he had been invisible; through them he asserts himself as
an individual, not until later realizing the significance
of his rebellion. Bigger's activities fit Sartre's
description of how men create themselves--

man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges
up in the world--and defines himself afterward

--since he doesn't really discover who he is until the very
end of the book. Bigger hasn't set out to kill, he just
has done it--without plan or forethought (or regret). Once
he has murdered he must endure great spiritual anguish
before he can finally accept himself for what he truly is.
He is a murderer and that is good--for him but not for
others, so he must die to reaffirm the value of life.

Although written in the thirties, Native Son is

 

thematically quite contemporary, having obvious similari-
ties to many existential novels. One particular novel

that comes to mind immediately is Paul Bowles' Let It Come

 

Down, written in 1952. Like Bigger, Nelson Dyar is a
victim who has no control over his own fate (he calls it
being in a cage--like Jake Jackson in the squirrels' cage

in Lawd Today). A failure in his thirties, Dyar is forced

 

to compromise his principles and turn to crime and chicanery

132

in order to rustle up some self-respect. After stealing
money from a group of men engaged in illegal money-
exchanging, Dyar has a moment of lucidity when he realizes
that he is responsible for himself:

11 *wanted to do this,‘ he told himself. It had been
his choice. He was responsible for the fact that at
the moment he was where he was and could not be
elsewhere. There was even a savage pleasure to be
had in reflecting that he could do nothing else but
go on and see what would happen, and that this
impossibility of finding any other solution was a
direct result of his own decision.

Later in his hideout, Dyar again rejoices at his having

"escaped becoming a victim" as he puts it.113

That night
overcome by the narcotic effects of the majoun (hashish)
he has eaten, Dyar accidentally kills his Arab companion,

Thami Beidaoui--although he has wished him dead, just like

 

Bigger feared Mary and wished her dead before accidentally
killing her. Rising in the night to secure a banging door
that has annoyed him before, Dyar drives a nail through
Thami's head. This gruesome scene is related very quietly
by Bowles giving it a dreamlike quality--just the effect
that Wright evokes when Bigger chops up Mary's body after
smothering her.

When Dyar's acquaintance, Daisy de Valverde, comes
up the mountain to help him she discovers what he has done
and abruptly leaves him in disgust. At this moment Dyar
finally realizes that life is real, no longer a game. The

book ends with Dyar's new knowledge about himself:

133

Later he would be able to look straight at this know—
ledge without the unbearable, bursting anguish, but
now, at the beginning, sitting here beside Daisy in
the room where the knowledge had been born, it was
too much. . . . He stood there in the patio a moment,
the cold rain wetting him. (A place in the world, a
definite status, a precise relationship with the rest
of men.' Even if it had to belgne of open hostility,
it was his, created by him.)
Richard Lehan describes this horrible murder as effectively
bolting the "door between [Dyar] and humanity." As he says,
"both Bigger and Dyar have made such extreme commitments
to themselves that they forever isolate themselves from
the rest of the world unlike Bellow's Joseph and Camus'
"plague-striken [who] are able to reaffirm their initial
identity and to return to the original community."115 From
what we learn about both Bigger and Dyar neither would be
willing to relinquish his newly created identity, since
both were without any before their crimes, suffering as
they were from self-alienation. Both again seem to be

examples of Camus' innocent murderers. Similarly, Cass

Kingsolving in Willian Styron's Set This House on Fire is

 

an innocent murderer intent on returning logic and order
to an absurd environment. His rebellion "expresses a
nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of
being. But one day nostalgia takes up arms and assumes
the responsibility of total guilt; in other words, adopts
murder and violence."116

What Camus calls the innocent murderer, Hassan calls

the rebel-victim. Whatever the term used, this modern

134

anti-hero contains within himself a dual heritage, exhi-
biting traits of both the eternal rebel, Prometheus, and
the eternal victim, Sisyphus (who also rebelled in favor
of life). Through the epigraph he chose, Wright evidently
was identifying his hero with another archetypal victim,
Job:

Even today is my complaint rebellious,
My stroke is heavier than my groaning.

Notably Wright has selected a passage that illustrates
Job's Promethean defiance; the verse (23:2) appears as
part of the dialogue between Job and his friends in which
he defends himself, proclaiming his righteousness and
unjust treatment at the hand of God. In Frye's essay,

Job is his example of the pharmakos or victim, and

 

Prometheus is the archetype of the tragic hero, the figure
"who is human and yet of a heroic size which often has in
it the suggestion of divinity."117 The central principle

of tragic irony is that whatever happens to the hero should

 

be causally out of line with his character";118 for example,

the story of Job is a tragic irony since he is a pharmakos,

 

unfairly victimized but incapable of making a tragic
Promethean figure of himself. As I have pointed out,

Native Son is also tragic irony since Bigger, like the

 

heroes in Saul Bellow's novels, is a random victim unable

to attain tragic stature because of the limitations of

his nature.119

135

Bigger as pharmakos is neither completely innocent

 

nor entirely guilty. As Frye defines him,
He [the pharmakos] is innocent in the sense that what
happens to him is far greater than anything he has
done provokes, like the mountaineer whose shout
brings down an avalanche. He is guilty in the sense
that he is a member of a guilty society, or living
in a world where such injustices are an inescapable
part of existence.120
Bigger, although he is guilty of murder, is still imbued
with a certain basic innocence since what happens to him
seems out of prOportion to his crime. In Frye's scheme
therefore Native Son is incongruously ironic, a condition
"in which all attempts to transfer guilt to a victim give
that victim something of the dignity of innocence." The
archetype in this category is Christ, "the perfectly

innocent victim excluded from human society."121

Bigger
is no paragon of virtue but he is identified with Christ
by Wright.122 Furthermore, although Bigger is a killer,
somehow society overreacts to him, calling him a black

ape, a sub-human creature, a monster. He is treated like

Yakov Bok in Bernard Malamud's The Fixer (1966):

 

A hand reached forth and plucked him in by his Jewish
beard--Yakov Bok, a freethinking Jew in a brick

factory in Kiev, yet any Jew, any plausible Jew--

to be the Tsar's adversary and victim; chosen to murder
the corpse His Majesty had furnished free; to be
imprisoned, starved, degraded, chained like an animal
to a wall although he was innocent. Why? because no
Jew was innocent in a corrupt state, the most visible
sign of its corruption its fear and hatred of those

it persecuted.123

Across the world Jews have been treated as eternal victims.

In America the Negro has been the ubiquitous scapegoat.

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136

Aware of this country's predilection for punishing
innocent blacks for its own crimes, Wright symbolically
presents Bigger in Messianic images, as a black Christ
sacrificed for his race. For example, when Bigger is
captured, the police stretch out his arms "as though about
to crucify him" and place their feet on his wrists (253).
When his family visits him in jail, Bigger feels like
Christ. Seeing that they are ashamed of him, Bigger is
convinced that they should instead be proud since he has
"taken fully upon himself the crime of being black." He
feels that they ought to "look at him and go home contented,
feeling that their shame was washed away" (275). While
wearing a cross given him by his mother's preacher,124
Bigger chances to see a burning cross set up by the Ku
Klux Klan. Cursing, he rips off his own cross, shrilly
asserting, "'I can die without a cross!‘" (313) In his
anger, his own body "seemed a flaming cross as words
bOiled hysterically out of him" (314). Not only does
Bigger assume the Christlike attributes of being a sacrij
ficial victim, but he becomes his own vehicle of cruci-
fixion. Like Camus' rebel "he is acting in the name of
certain values which are still indeterminate but which he

"125 He has

feels are common to himself and to all men.
acted in behalf of his race and its displacement; although
he is an individual man he transcends his uniqueness to

represent higher values of order and reason; as Brignano

suggests,

137

Although Bigger is estranged from both the religion

and folk culture of his race . . . [he] can still

represent the Negro in abstract terms of Negro

responses to their being placed outside of many

aspects of the American Dream.
Again he reminds the reader of Yakov Bok who says to his
absent father-in-law, "'Live, Shmuel. Let me die for
you.”127

Whereas Yakov Bok waits years to come to trial,

Bigger's trial is swift and merciless. Its outcome is
predetermined, the result of his being black and despised.
Bigger's motivation for Mary's murder had been the fear
that came from the knowledge that he could never explain
his presence in her bedroom. His sacrifice is therefore,
on the one hand, inevitable in a white society. And yet
because Wright has depicted him through frequent Messianic
symbols and identified him outright with Job, his sacrifice
is also incongruous. He simply does not deserve the
maltreatment he has been given for twenty years, nor does
he deserve the accusations leveled at him during the trial,

128 Further-

nor the vile epithets appearing in the papers.
more, since Bigger has acted out of a need to express him-
self in human terms, those horrifying murders could be
regarded as innocent acts. He, for one, does not consider
himself guilty. And society, in attempting to lay all the
blame on him, manages to create a certain innocence in

this frightened black youth, whose life has been nothing

:more than a slow dance of death. Thus his role as

138

scapegoat is both inevitable and.incongruous: his black-
ness destines him to the role but does not justify it.

It is probably predictable that numerous arguments
have been waged over the identity of Bigger Thomas.129
One side argues that Bigger functions primarily as a
symbol for his race or for all underpriviliged men; thus
he is Everyman. The other side contends that Bigger is
more than a function of a protest novel, that he is indeed
an individual with personal fears and desires, most notably
his very private dread of death and his urge to be accepted
into society. He is, to these critics, very simply, a man.

Because the first school of thinkers tends to regard
Native Son solely as a proletarian novel, a protest novel
written from a communistic perspective, they fail to see
that Bigger's personality is explored. They believe Max's
argument that Bigger multiplied twelve million times will
yield "'the psychology of the Negro people,'" and, as a
consequence, they, like Max, cannot see Bigger as a single

individual (364). But an exchange between Max and Bigger
130

has been identified by Donald B. Gibson as a key scene
for revealing the mistaken position of critics who favor
the social or symbolic function of Bigger:
[Maxz] 'Well, this thing's bigger than you, son.
In a certain sense, every Negro in America's
on trial out there today.‘

[Bigger:] 'They going to kill me anyhow' (340).
(italics mine)

139

The two men's opposing perspectives on just what Bigger is
recur in the final scene when Bigger reveals to a horrified
Max that he has accepted himself. Gibson allows that the
tension revolving around Bigger's status is not resolved
until the end of the book; but he also insists that clues

to the dénouement appear throughout the first two sections.

 

As Gibson points out, Bigger could not be expected
to understand Max's speech since it deals with him in
abstract, symbolic terms. Instead he intuits its meaning
from Max's tone, feeling proud because "Max had made the
speech all for him, to save his life. It was not the
meaning of the speech that gave him pride, but the mere
act of it" (371). Since Max's attempt to save Bigger's
life is doomed from the start, Gibson argues that the
significant problem is whether or not Bigger will be able
to save himself "by coming to terms with himself. This
we see him doing as we observe him during long, solitary
hours of minute introspection and'self—analysis."131

Bigger's final victory is that he does arrive "at
a definition of self which is his own and different from
that assigned to him by everyone else in the novel."132
But before he can discover himself, he has to shed the
misconceptions about himself that the world has taught him.

He must, in other words, see himself through his own eyes

and not through someone else's.

i
/,
n.

140

Fittingly, Wright entitled Part I "Fear." For fear
in all its disguises controls Bigger's life. He is afraid
of specifics, like whites or stealing or his gang. But
he is also haunted by a more pervasive and less directed
sense of dread, where no particular object can be identi-
fied as the cause of his discomfort. On the superficial
everyday non-cognitive level, Bigger fears; underneath on
the ontological level, Bigger fears. Therefore, for him
to live from day to day on any sort of level at all,
Bigger must repress his fear, hide it from his conscious
self:

[Hlis courage to live depended upon how successfully
his fear was hidden from his consciousness. . . . As
long as he could remember, he had never been responsi-
ble to anyone. The moment a situation became so that
it exacted something of him, he rebelled. That was
the way he lived; he passed his days trying to defeat
or gratify powerful impulses in a world he feared (44).
Although Bigger ultimately rebels by murdering, he first
rebels against society by mentally negating its distaste-
ful elements; by blotting things out, to use Wright's phrase.
As I have suggested, this "blotting out" becomes a major
motif in the novel.

When Bigger is with the Daltons he repeatedly tries
to blot them out since they make him so uncomfortable. At
their home to be interviewed by Mr. Dalton, Bigger
impulsively blots out this well-meaning but misguided

philanthropist because he cannot tolerate the atmosphere

of wealth surrounding him. Dalton ruins his composure to

141

the extent that Bigger blots himself out. He begins to
pose, to play the role he thinks is expected of him:
He stood with his knees slightly bent, his lips
partly open, his shoulders stooped; and his eyes

held a look that went only to the surface of
things (50).

This role-playing under stress is paralleled by the heroes

in both The Long Dream and The Outsider.

 

In these scenes with the Daltons Wright is playing
with words: "Daltonism" is a form of color blindness.
Wright seems to be saying that although the Daltons try
to be color blind and not see Bigger's color, they really
don't see him at all. And since they are totally blind
to his reality, Bigger will be able to get away with murder
right under their eyes. The physically blind Mrs. Dalton
is the only witness to Bigger's crime, but the others do
not even suspect him because he is invisible to them.
Bigger has no more impact on them than Ralph Ellison's
Invisible Man has on the white people he meets.133

Before murdering Mary, Bigger had wanted to blot
out.her and her communist boyfriend, Jan, as he drove them
to a restaurant in the Black Belt. Their bizarre behavior--
a ndxiure of concern and almost flippant disregard for his
feelings--had driven Bigger to despair. His self-hate
‘was so great at that moment that he had longed to blot

out.the entire car, himself included. Treated like a

speciman rather than a man, Bigger wavered between fear

142

and hatred of these odd people. But Jan and Mary had
chatted on, oblivious to Bigger's emotional upheaval as
he squirmed beside them.

It isn't until after the murder that Bigger truly
sees his home and family for what they are. When he
realizes that he hates the apartment and all its inhabit-
ants, even himself, he wants to blot them out. All his
life, he feels, his family has shackled him, prevented him
from living his own life. Like the whites they have been
instrumental in his victimization.

But then, in the middle of his despair, he realizes
with a start that in killing Mary he has created a new life
for himself. The murder becomes a "barrier of protection
between him and a world he feared." He is suddenly proud
of the murder, recognizing it as a personally satisfying
act, something that no one can take from him. It becomes
the "hidden meaning of his life" (101). All the inchoate
ideas that have disturbed him for twenty years are taking
on shape and significance. He is creating a self (101).

This new awareness of himself and the world, born
of rebellion, shows him the potential inherent in the
circumstance that everyone is blind--has always been blind.
As Robert Bone observes, Bigger begins to use this know-
ledge immediately,

Bigger learns to exploit the blindness of others,

'fooling the white folks' during his interrogation,
and this is again something deep in his racial

143
heritage, springing from a long tradition of telling
whites whatever they want to hear.134
Bigger later plans to cash in on the world's blindness by
collecting ransom money from the Daltons:
Now, who on earth would think that he, a black timid
Negro boy, would murder and burn a rich white girl
and would sit and wait for his breakfast like this?
Elation filled him (102).
Out of rather hideous conditions, this anti-hero has
created a new life of infinite possibilities. And Bigger
exults in his rebirth, eager to explore strange new lands.

But Bigger is not yet totally free. He is still
in bondage to certain old ideas and relationships-—especial1y
where his own people are concerned. He feels alienated
from them as he did before, angry with them for not assert-
ing themselves as a group. And, although he does have a
dim hope for their future, his immediate reaction is to
blot them out. He does realize, however, that the whites
have conditioned him to fear and distrust his own people
(110).

Bigger regularly uses sex and liquor to blot out
the world. But after sexually having his girl Bessie, he
yearns to blot her out because she is too limited for him.
Blind like the others, she circles continually in her
narrow meaningless orbit (133). Bigger obviously does not

love her: as he himself admits later, he had to have a

girl so he had Bessie (326).

144

Suffused with a feeling of power and emboldened by
his newly acquired ability to control his own fate, Bigger
at least temporarily "blot[s] out the fear of death" (141).
Not only is he now confident of his capabilities, but he
also revels in a sense of fulness, for he is free of the
invisible binding forces that have plagued him for twenty
years. He asserts this new strength during his examination
by Mr. Dalton and the police, momentarily leading them off
the track by heading them toward Jan and the other com-
munists.

At the same time Bigger is acting boldly to save
his skin, his mind is covertly continually hovering over
his crime, caressing and probing it, trying to discover
its meaning for him. His earliest conclusions foreshadow
Max's speech. For deep down he is convinced that Mary's
murder wasn't accidental, that he had in truth "killed many
times before, only on those other times there had been no
handy victim or circumstance to make visible or dramatic
his will to kill" (101). Suddenly he sees this single
consummated murder as the hidden meaning of his life; jeal-g
ously he protects it, having a "kind of terrified pride"
that someday he will be able to take credit for this crime
publicly. "It was as though he had an obscure but deep
debt to fulfill to himself in accepting the deed" (101).
He is learning to accept the consequences of his actions,

as Sartre says all men must. Through this sense of being

145

responsible for himself Bigger is being reborn. Mary's
murder and its violent aftermath have struck a chord deep
within Bigger's soul that vibrates with a hitherto unknown
intensity. Its resounding music drowns out Bigger's old
personality--the timid, fearful black boy conditioned by
society to feel innately inferior to whites.

In a caste system which isn't supposed to even
exist, the hatred engendered by oppression is enormous.
And so, because whites have treated him as an untouchable,
Bigger sees them as the enemy, despising them, eager to do
violence against them given the chance. Thus it is not
surprising that he feels no regrets over having murdered
Mary Dalton since he can rationalize that his action was
justified "by the fear and shame she had made him feel"
(108). Because of their caste differences Mary had been
no more real to Bigger than he to her. As far as Bigger
was concerned, whites weren't even people--they were a
"great natural force" that directed his actions (109).
Once Bigger realizes that they are vulnerable--even mortal--
he is freed from the mythology of their omnipotence. No
longer will they be able to control him by fear and coercion.
Bigger has discovered not only that he can murder whites,
but that he can get away with it. It is truly a revelation
for him. From the moment that he becomes certain that "his
whole life was caught up in a supreme and meaningful act"
(111), he heads toward a new life, a new identity forged

out of blood and violence.

toward s
problem
his new
suscept
inue t
fluctua

fieteml

sentat
5‘! pra

‘
5T1 :
.. ‘ 0‘~

Ff‘ R
hiker

146

Although Bigger seems to be steadily progressing
toward self-integration, he still has not resolved the
problem of how to get along in this world. Confident of
his newly discovered inner strengths, he is still frequently
susceptible to the whites' intimidation. And blacks con-
tinue to annoy him. Bigger knows both fear and temerity,
fluctuating between a wild dream of escaping and a stubborn
determination to bluff his way out of trouble. He finally
decides to stay, confident that the whites' blind pride
will protect him since they will continue to deny that
blacks are capable of planning and executing such a bold
crime (of. pp. 139, 153, 176, 229). Recognizing his
invisible power, Bigger, as we have seen, recklessly plots
to collect ransom money for Mary. Although he is repre-
sentative of the metaphysical rebel, he is still driven
by practical and mundane desires. It isn't until the very
end of the book that Bigger is released from such dross
concerns.

In the meantime, Bigger's sense of security stems
from his gun. Not armed with a glib tongue, Bigger
instinctively reaches for a weapon whenever he feels
threatened. For example, when Bessie asks him if he has
harmed Mary, Bigger automatically longs for "something in
his hand, something solid and heavy: his gun, a knife,

a brick" (137). Eventually, Bigger is able to force down

this fear that threatens to engulf him, for inside he knows

that he

cm fat

out of
thought
he has
report
tegins
is ire:
vent a
trappe
right
away “
331?: YE
be red
icesn‘

item;

147

that he can escape whenever he wants to; he controls his
own fate now (cf. pp. 141, 155, 179).

Clever and cool as he has been, Bigger finally falls
out of the catbird seat. Because he could not bear the
thoughts of possibly seeing Mary's bones in the furnace,
he has avoided shaking down the ashes. As the newspaper
reporters wait there for further news of the crime, smoke
begins to pour into the basement. Annoyed with Bigger who
is immobilized by fear, the men open the bin to clear the
vent and in so doing discover Mary's bones. Bigger has
trapped himself. His discovery seems inevitable and almost
right since he has committed such an ugly crime and got
away with it so smoothly; society must be put back in order.
And yet, it is incongruous that the perfect crime should
be ruined by a simple human failing; and somehow the reader
doesn't want Bigger to get caught. (An analogous dramatic
irony and tension surround Oedipus Rex as he unwittingly
curses himself and sets out to effect his own downfall.)
When Mary's body is discovered, Bigger relapses into the
fear-hate-fear syndrome identified by Horace Cayton;13S
although he longs to strike back he must flee. Driven by
his reappearing fear, he kills Bessie by smashing her face
in with a brick and throwing her body down an air-shaft.

Once more Bigger discovers a bloody and violent truth
about himself: that he is free. Wright tells us that

these two murders have given Bigger the chance to experience

148

the consequences of his actions; that he is aware of the
fact that he can no longer be locked in the ghetto and
forgotten. He knows intuitively that his life up until
this time has lacked wholeness, that his will and mind
have been fractured. The only real need that he can articu-
late now is his desire to merge with the rest of the world,
"to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be
allowed a chance to live like others, even though he was
black" (225f). (This need is much more profound that his
earlier ones for bodily satisfaction.) But Bigger's crime
has forever sealed him off from other people. And so, his
self-integration can be reached only at.the expense of
his social integration. Like Cross Damon he has used murder
to create a new world for himself, one which he will in-
habit entirely alone. Bigger is not asking to be God; he
is simply asking to be a man. And since even rebellion
cannot brook murder, Bigger must himself die to attain
metaphysical unity with other men.

Even though he feels that he has acted in behalf
of other blacks, Bigger continues to have trouble sorting
out how he feels about them; although he hates them, he
identifies with them. And as a fugitive hiding in the
Black Belt, Bigger learns that blacks in their turn feel
ambivalent about him:

'Jack, you mean t' stan' there 'n' say yuh'd give

tha' nigger up t' the white folks?‘
'Damn right Ah would! . . . Ef Ah knowed where

tha' nigger wuz ah'd turn im up 'n' git these white
folks off me.‘ . . .

149
'But, Jack, . . . [yluh gotta stan' up 'n' fight
these folks' (235).
One black is tolerant, the other wants to pay the devil
his due. When Bigger hears this he clutches his gun, ready
to use it on his own people if they attempt to turn him in.

From the moment he is captured to the time of his
sentencing, Bigger alternates between defiance and depres-
sion. On the roof, about to be captured, Bigger resolves
to rely on himself and defy the police, but once he is
arrested he slips into a physiological stupor, a blessing
that allows him to be oblivious to his torture while his
mind actively seeks an answer to the meaning of his life.
Bigger's struggle to find direction and comfort is
agonizing--so much so that he flirts with the idea of
suicide. Tormented by failure, he desires to reunite with
the "dark face of ancient waters" because he cannot rejoin
the society of men (255). He thinks he can quell the
troublesome inner desires that will not be denied--and
that have driven him to a second murder--only if he dies.
This is Bigger's darkest hour of despair.

The terrors of the trial add to his misery and
confusion. During the trial he hears Max explain that his
life style had been one composed of total guilt, that his
"'entire attitude toward life is a grimgl'" (366). Max
blames society for Bigger's aberrant behavior. Then rather

melodramatically he pleads to the court to have Bigger

150

incarcertated rather than electrocuted so that society can
grant him an identity by giving him a number.

But Bigger wants to be more than a number. He wants
what Allen Wheelis calls a "coherent sense of self" where
what he does and feels makes sense, has meaning;136 where
he will experience fulness and integration; where he will
have a moral code to help direct his actions. And he finds
an identity and code by accepting the murder that sets him
free (255). Although Bigger's conception of what is immoral
deviates from society's, he has chosen what he believes is
right for himself.

Finally, in a moving scene, Bigger lets down the
wall that he had erected between himself and the rest of
the world. He allows himself to confide in Max, speaking
to him "as he had never spoken to anyone in his life; not
even to himself" (333). This confession acts as a catalyst,
allowing him to examine his relationship to other people.
And what he envisions is so daring that it weakens him;
for he sees a future clothed in a blinding light that melts
away all differences among men. No longer does Bigger
wish to die. 3

But since he has opened his soul to the dream of
brotherhood, he is more than ever open to "the hot blasts
of hate" (336). And because he is in limbo between an
inherited unwanted identity and a self-created welcome

one, he is vulnerable to all attacks on his psyche,

151

undecided as to whether he should have hope or give way
to despair. He sees two conflicting pictures of himself:
one where he is isolated, ready to die; and another where
he is about to begin a new life under society's protection.
When Max visits him on the eve of his execution,
Bigger admits that he is vulnerable, never truly having
been a hard man (a difficult disclosure for someone who
acted so tough all his life--like Studs Lonigan permitting
his poetical nature to surface when he is with Lucy). But
Bigger's faith in himself is still uncertain until he listens
to Max's impassioned raving about capitalism and the prole-
tariat. Max claims that the world has stopped growing
because of a few selfish doubters who own all the property;
that, furthermore, these men protect their holdings at the
expense of men like Bigger who long to share the world's
wealth. Max swears that the world itself is held together
by faith, by men's beliefs. This statement strikes a fire
in Bigger's imagination. He proudly announces his new
credo, belief in himself, to a horrified Max. Having
concluded, thanks to Max's political pep_talk, that it
was right of him to want a part of the world, Bigger
argues that he should have fought for recognition as a
human being. Since murder was the only way for him to
rebel successfully, his crime was a morally fine act for
him. So Bigger exults, laughing and shouting,

'I believe in myself . . . [W]hat I killed for, I am!
It must've been pretty deep in me to make me kill!

152

. . . It must have been good}: 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! (39lf).

Bigger's jubilation in the face of death corresponds to
Icirdlov's and Oedipus' responses to their fate. Camus says,

Kirilov must kill himself out of love for humanity.

. . . Thus, it is not despair that urges him to death,
but love of his neighbor for his own sake. Before
terminating in blood an indescribable spiritual ad-
venture, Kirilov makes a remark as old as human
suffering: 'All is well!‘

And of Oedipus ,
Then a tremendous remark rings out: 'Despite so many
ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul
make me conclude that all is well.‘ . . . [Alnd that
remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited

universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not
been, exhausted. . . . It makes of fate a human matter,

which must be settled among men.138
Bigger's existential self-realization terrifies Max
Mfl1c> had been pursuing the dialectics of communism. For
Bigger launches himself onto a higher plane of existence
Where he alone is responsible for himself and his crimes.
There he accepts himself as a murderer, creating his own
VTlllles and even his own world where he is an heroic figure.
ESther M. Jackson calls Native Son
19erhaps . . . the most moving and passion-filled
Iportrait of a Negro as man in revolt against Fate
- . . a record of man's dramatic encounter with
IFate in the climate of the absurd.139
Bigger has thrown himself into battle with absurdity and won.
Bigger's existential self-creation is strongly

positive, analogous to what Abraham Maslow calls the "peak-

experience" in self—actualized people. Like the subjects

153

Maslow interviewed, Bigger loses his fear and anxiety at
the moment of insight, feeling a unity within himself and
a. transcendence of his conflicts. He seems to have become
IiiJnself at long last. Maslow defines this experience
as an episode, or a spurt in which the powers of the
person come together in a particularly efficient and
intensely enjoyable way, and in which he is more
integrated and less split, more open for experience,
more idiosyncratic, more perfectly expressive or spon-
taneous, or fully functioning, . . . more ego-
transcending, more independent of his lower needs,
etc. He becomes in these episodes more truly him-

self, more perfectly actualizing his potentialitiesa
closer to the core of his Being, more fully human.

Although Bigger does not have an opportunity to repeat
tinis experience or even to act upon it, since he is about
tc> die in the electric chair, he, nonetheless, delights in
knowing himself however fleetingly and thus goes to his
death wearing a "faint, wry, bitter smile" (392). At this
Stage in his life Wright was obviously attracted to exis-
tential thinking; it isn't until the end of The Outsider
that he seems to reject it, finding it too nihilistic.

In summary, Native Son protests against man's in-
humanity to man, specifically that of the whites' in regard
to the blacks. A proletarian novel designed to bring the
plight of the black masses to public attention, this book
all-SO illustrates the quest for identity observable in
existential literature. It is therefore possible to read
thug kaook both as an indictment of racism and as exploration

into the nature of man. It poses an answer to the question

asked in one of Langston Hughes' poems, "What happens to

154

a dream deferred?"141 According to wright, it explodes.
Furthermore, since Wright saw the black man as the metaphor
for modern man,142 he equates Bigger's quest for identity
with that of all men. To quote Wright: "The voice of the
American Negro is rapidly becoming the most representative
voice of America and of oppressed people anywhere in the
world today."143 But clearly it was of considerable
significance to Wright that his hero be seen first as a
black and then as a man.

Native Son therefore continues the story of black

 

Oppression and estrangement begun in The Long Dream and

 

Lawd Today. With Native Son, however, a third element

 

appears—-that of rebellion. For Bigger is not only an
unwilling slave but--unlike Fish and Jake--he acts defi-
nitely to end his repression, the deed serving to free him
being, of course, his first murder. But, ironically, the
key to his freedom is also the final blow to his hopes

for social acceptance. Accordingly, although he dies a
free man, he also dies a lonely man. Moreover, the
environment that Bigger has managed to transcend has in
reality controlled his mode of expression, leaving him only
one way to end his servitude. Because Bigger was not given
the freedom or the means to develop a healthy personality,
he became a mean-spirited, emotionally stunted delinquent.
Poor and black and of limited intelligence, he is unable

to fight his way out of the ghetto-~physical and

155

psychological--through conventional methods since society
has closed all its doors to him. The only way left is
for him to rebel in the most dramatic and shocking way he
can-~by killing. 1

Although society has forced this act upon him,
Bigger executes a flp d3 g_J_:‘_a_cg by rejecting society's
evaluation of the murder as morally debilitating. By
interpreting the deed as morally sound and beneficent,
Bigger is able to escape the confines of his environment
and gain an identity. Instead of remaining a victim of
naturalistic forces, Bigger, by the end of Native Son,
has become the master of his fate. Though still a pariah,
Bigger is no longer invisible.

A more extreme advocate of individual freedom is
Cross Damon, existential hero of The Outsider, whose story

takes up where Native Son ends.

Chapter III, Footnotes

1. That is, in this particular case, a novel written
by a black man, in dialect, from the perspective of another
black man. It is closely related to Raman K. Singh's
concept of a "Soul Novel" which, according to him, "implies
two basic elements: one, a rejection of the machine-
culture of western society; and two, a recognition that
the black life-style can act as a living, potent force
capable of saving the soul of a decadent west." His
examples are Cane and Invisible Man ("The Black Novel and
Its Tradition," The Colorado Quarterly, XX [Summer, 1971],
27).

 

2. This technique of ironical juxtaposition,
probably learned from the proletarian writers, also appears
in Native Son; See Chapter III, pp. 104—106 for diScussion
and examples.

3. "Review of Lawd Today, by Richard Wright," CLA
Journal, VII (March, 1964), 269.

 

4. Dan McCall, The Example of Richard Wright (New
York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1969), P. 19.

 

5. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 101.

 

6. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, pp. 22—23.

 

 

7. Kent, "Adventure of Western Culture," 335.
8. See Chapter II, p. 52.

9. McCall, The Example of Richard Wright, p. 22.

 

10. Richard Wright, Lawd Today (New York: Avon
Books, 1969), p. 35. (All subsequent page references to
this work will appear in parentheses in the text.)

 

11. In this scene Wright explains the details of the
numbers racket, an unnecessary intrusion by the implied
author who also explains how the letter sorting works in
the post office. One assumes that Wright was attempting
to fill in the gaps for an audience unfamiliar with these
common aspects of black life (see Chapter V).

156

157

L 12. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetgric of Fiction (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 198, n. 25.

13. McCall, The Example of Richard Wright, p. 20.

14. Brignano says of this: "Wright does not fancy
his heroes in Lawd Today to be lovable creatures maintain-
:hig a philosophiCal cheerfulness in a land of plenty
‘quned barren because of the Great Depression. Their happy
Imyments arrive as relief from both the hardships and the
drabness of the Black Belt; however all too often these
moments come in the forms of liquor, narcotics, and illicit
sexual indulgence. . . . Just as the actions of Bigger
Thomas . . . are socially repugnant and despicable, so
(are those of Jake Jackson and other Negroes in Lawd Today.
Wright implies in both novels that framing the superstructure
of society dominated by the white world is capitalism,
vflnich is a force that smothers and denudes the individual

personality" (p. 23).

 

15. Kent, "Adventure of Western Culture," 339.

16. Nelson Algren, "Remembering Richard Wright,"
Nation, CXCII (Jan. 28, 1961), 85.

17. Black Voices, ed. by Abraham Chapman (New York:
New American Library, 1968), p. 540.

 

18. See: Keneth Kinnamon, "Native Son: The Personal,
Social, and Political Background," Phylon, XXX (Spring,
1959), 66-72 and Frederic Wertham, An Unconscious Deter-
minant in Native Son," Journal of Clinical Psychopathology
EQdIPsychotherapy, VI, 1 (July, 1944), Ill-115.

 

l9. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. Justin
O'Brien: (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), pp. 90, 91.

20. Frye, Anatomyyof Criticism, p. 187.

21. See Chapter II, p. 24 32 pasSim.

. 22. James E. Miller, Quests Surd and Absurd (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 14.

23. Ibid., p. viii.
24. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 34.
25. Ibid., p. 192.

26. Ibid., p. 236.

158

27. Ibid., p. 223.
28. Ibid., p. 237.

29. "How 'Bigger' Was Born,"'Black Voices, ed. by
Abraham Chapman (New York: New American Library, 1968),
p. 554.

30. See: Phyllis R. Klotman and Melville Yancey,
"Gift of Double Vision: Possible Political Implications
of Richard Wright's 'Self-Conscious' Thesis," CLA Journal,
XVI, 1 (September, 1972), 106-116.

31. "How 'Bigger' Was Born," Black Voices, p. 546.

 

32. "I Tried to be a Communist," The God That
Failed, ed. by Richard Crossman (New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1963), P. 118.

33. Albert Murray, "Something Different, Something
More," Anger and Beyond, ed. by Herbert Hill (New York:
Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968), p. 130.

 

34. Uncle Tom's Children (New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers, 1965), p. 180.

 

35. Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the
United States, 1900-1954: Some Interrelations 0
Literature and Society (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1956). Rideout recounts the arguments posed by left-
wing critics attempting to define a true proletarian novel.
One group, Rideout reports, contended "that subject matter,
the expression of proletarian existence, was the chief
characteristic distinguishing the proletarian novel from
the usual 'bourgeois' one. Other critics polarized around
what was, in terms of tradition in the American radical
novel, a more usual definition. They maintained that the
only important consideration was the conscious ideology
of the author, whether he attempted, whatever his class
origin, to work out in his fiction a Marxist analysis of
society" (166). Rideout accepts the latter definition as
most useful and appropriate.

 

 

36. "How 'Bigger' Was Born," Black Voices, p. 557.

 

37. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, p. 31.

38. Richard Wright, Native Son (New York: Harper &
Row, Publishers, 1966), p. 233. (All subsequent page
references to this work will appear in parentheses in the
textL)

 

159

39. Albert Camus, The Rebel, trans. Anthony Bower
(New York: Vintage Books, 1956), p. 10.

 

40. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, p. 31.

 

 

41. See Chapter V for a more thorough discussion
of this.

42. Charles Child Walcutt, American Literary
Naturalism: A Divided Stream (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1956), p. 22.

 

43. It is a narrative technique that allows Wright
to avoid direct commentary while reminding the reader of
where his sympathies lie (see Chapter V).

44. One is inevitably reminded of Dickens' Mrs.
Jellyby (Bleak House) who sends money to Africa while
neglecting her own family.

 

45. See Chapter V, pp. 259-261.

46. Hugh Morris Gloster, Negro Voices in Amegican
Fiction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1948), p. 34.

47. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States,
1900-1954: Some Interrelations of Literature and Society,
p. 261.

48. Richard Wright, "The Man Who Went to Chicago,"
Eight Men (New York: Pyramid Books, 1969), p. 172.

 

49. Crossman, The God That Failed, p. 162.

 

50. Bone, Pamphlet, p. 22.

51. Donald B. Gibson, "Wright's Invisible Native
Son," American Quarterly, XXI (Winter, 1969), 728-738.
See also Chapter III, p. 138-139.

 

52. For a discussion of Wright and existentialism,
see "Reflections on Richard Wright," Anger and Beyond, ed.
Herbert Hill (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1968),
pp. 196-212.

53. Walcutt, American Literary Naturalism: A
Divided Stream, p. 20.

 

54. Jean Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason, trans.
Eric Sutton (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 320.

160

55. Sartre, Age, p. 64.

56. Gloster, Negro Voices, p. 233.

 

57. See Chapter IV, pp. 192—194.

58. Camus, 52921! p. 13.

59. 2219!! p. 14.

60. Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of

Frederick Douglass: An American Slave: Written by Himself
(Garden City: Dolphin Books, 1963), P. 74.

 

61. Camus, Rebel, p. 17.

62. Walcutt, American Literary Naturalism: A
Divided Stream, p. 20.

 

 

63. Camus, Sisyphus, p. 21.

64. Gibson, "Wright's Invisible," 737.

65. Quoted by David Galloway, The Absurd Hero in
American Fiction (Austin: The University of Texas Press,
1970), p. 15.

 

66. Walcutt, American LiterarypNaturalism: A
Divided Stream, p. 20.

67. Hassan, Radical Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 27.

 

68. Camus, Rebel, pp. 23, 25.

69. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His Works, p. 35.

 

 

70. Miller, Quests Surd and Absurd, pp. 11-17.

 

71. Galloway, The Absurd Hero in American Fiction,
p. 16, pp passim.
72. Richard K. Barksdale, "Alienation and The Anti-

Hero in Recent American Fiction," CLA Journal, XI (Sept.,
1966), 6.

 

73. Hassan, Part I, pp. 9-95.

74. Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology (New York:
The Free Press, 1962), p. 358.

 

161

75. Ibid., p. 360, pp passim.

76. Kenneth Keniston, "Alienation and the Decline
of Utopia," American Scholar, XXXIX (1960), 161-200.

 

77. Barksdale, "Alienation and The Anti-Hero in
Recent American Fiction," pp. 1-10.

78. Sidney Finkelstein, Exiptentialism and Alienation
in American Literature (New York: International Publishers,
1965), p. 140.

79. See Chapter II, pp. 48-50. Horney defines the
terms in the following manner: "actual self is an all-
inclusive term for everything that a person is at a given
time: body and soul, healthy and neurotic. . . The idealized
self is what we are in our irrational imagination, or what
we should be according to the dictates of neurotic pride.

The real self. . .is the 'original' force toward indiVidual
growth and fulfillment, with which we may again achieve
full identification when freed of the crippling shackles

of neurosis" (p. 158). [ItaliCs mine.]

 

 

 

80. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 122.

 

81. Ibid., p. 123.

82. Ibid., p. 157.

83. Ibid., p. 159.

84. Ibid., p. 160.

85. See: Dwight G. Dean, "Alienation: Its Meaning
and Measurement," American Sociological Review, XXVI, 5
(Oct., 1961), 753-758; Melvin Seeman, "On the Meaning of

Alienation," American Sociological Review, XXIV, 6 (Dec.,
1959), 783-791.

 

 

86. Quoted by Melvin Seeman, "On the Meaning of
Alienation," 790.

87. Allen Wheelis, The Quest for Identity (New York:
W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., 1958), p. 19.

 

88. Ibid., p. 19.
89. See Chapter III, pp. 140 ff.

90. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 160.

 

162

91. Camus, Sis hus, p. 21, et assim. The same
clash is seen in naturaEIstic literaffire where man is torn
between his desire for unity with nature and his need to
fight it for survival; see Chapter III, pp. 113-114.

92. Ibid., p. 5.

93. Galloway, The Absurd Hero in American Fiction,
p. 18.

 

94. Ibid., p. 18.

95. Camus, Sisyphus, p. 40.

96. Hassan, Radical Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 6.

 

 

97. Ibid., pp. 6-7.

98. See Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 42, and
Camus, Rebel, p. 297, for similar observations on the hero's
basic innocence in a guilty society.

 

99. Miller, Quests Surd and Absurd, p. 5.

 

100. Richard Lehan, "Existentialism in Recent
American Fiction: The Demonic Quest," Recent American
Fiction, ed. by Joseph Waldmeir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1963), p. 64 (originally appeared in Texas Studies
in Literature and Languages, I [Summer, l959l, 181-202).

 

 

101. Ibid., p. 65.

102. Hassan, Radical Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 18.

 

103. Ibid., p. 31.

104. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son (New York:
Bantom, 1968), pp. 27-28.

 

105. Camus, Rebel, p. 17.

106. See Camus, The Fall (trans. Justin O'Brien [New
York: Vintage Books, 1956]) when Jean-Baptiste Clamence
states, "Like many men, they the criminals had no longer
been able to endure anonymity, and that impatience had
contributed to leading them to unfortunate extremities"
(26).

107. Camus, Rebel, p. 297.

. .Ii 3

163

108. 3213'! pp. 284, 297.

109. 5219!! p. 40.

110. 'gpig., p. 15.

111. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism"
(trans. Mairet), Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre,

ed. by Walter Kaufman (New York: The World Publishing Co.,
1972), p. 290.

 

112. Paul Bowles, Let It Come Down (New York:
Random House, Inc., 1952), p. 241.

 

113. Ibid., p. 266.
114. Ibid., pp. 310, 311.

115. Lehan, "Existentialism in Recent American
Fiction: The Demonic Quest," p. 75.

116. Camus, Rebel, p. 105.

117. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 42.

 

118. Ibid., p. 41.
119. See Chapter III, pp. 94-95.

120. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 41.

 

121. Ibid., p. 42.

122. As are, in varying degrees, other Wright
heroes, such as Chris Sims (The Long Dream), Cross Damon
(The Outsider), and Fred Daniels ("The Man Who Lived
Underground"). See also "Bright and Morning Star": "The
wrongs and sufferings of black men had taken the place of
Him nailed to the Cross . . ." (Uncle Tom's Children,

p. 185).

 

 

123. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (New York: Dell
Publishing Co., Inc., 1971), p. 256.

 

124. Ministers are portrayed in less than compli-
mentary lights in most of Wright's fiction. The one
exception is the Reverend Dan Taylor in "Fire and Cloud,"
who leads the poverty-stricken masses of both races in a
demonstration of strength against the forces of authority
during the depression.

125. Camus, Rebel, p. 16.

164

126. Brignano, Richard Wright: An Introduction to
the Man and His WOrks, p. 32.

 

 

127. Malamud, The Fixer, p. 222.

 

128. Critics were loath to accept these accounts
as valid representations of even yellow journalism, finding
them far too strong; for example, Hubert Creekmore, a
white reviewer, says that "The manner and content of
these newspapers exceed belief" ("Social Factors in
Native Son," The University of Kansas City Review, VII
[1941], 140). And yet, excerpts from the press' coverage
of the Robert Nixon case in 1938, quoted by Keneth
Kinnamon ("Native Son: The Personal, Social, and
Political Background," Phylon, XXX [Spring, 1969], 66-72),
show that Wright was not exaggerating; for example, a
headline: "'Brick Slayer Is Likened to Jungle Beast'"
(69).

 

 

 

129. See, for example: Gibson, "Wright's
Invisible." James Baldwin, "Everybody's Protest Novel,"
Notes of a Native Son (New York: A Bantam Book, 1968),
pp. 9-17. Davidgfifitt, "Native Son: Watershed of Negro
Protest Literature" and John F. Bayliss, "Native §on:
Protest or Psychological Study?" Negro American Liferature
Forim, I, 1 (Fall, 1967), pages unnumbered. James G.
Kennedy, "The Content and Form of Natiye Son," and Annette
Conn, "Comment," College English, XXXIV, 2 (Nov., 1972),
269—286.

 

 

 

 

 

130. Gibson, "Wright's Invisible," 729.
131. Ibid., 731.
132. Ibid., 729.

133. Michel Fabre has noted this theme of invisi-
bility in his Les Noirs Américans (Paris: Librairie Armand
Colin, 1967, 1970): ¥"Le théme de la non-existence du Noir
reveint constamment dans sa littérature: dans Dusk of
Dawn, W.E.B. DuBois évoque un monde de phantasmes semblable
a celui du mythe platonicien de la caverne. Richard Wright
emploie 1'image du souterrain dans "The Man Who Lived
Underground" ou des ombres dans "The Man Who Killed a
Shadow" pour montrer a la fois l'irréalité du Noir, et
l'irréalité, pour lui, du monde qui l'entoure. Ralph Ellison
fait de cette transparence le sujet méme du roman Invisible
Map. James Baldwin insiste sur l'anonymat et intitule un
recueil d'essais Nobody Knows My Name" (p. 109).

 

134. Bone, Pamphlet, p. 146.

165

135. See Horace Cayton, "IdeOlogical Forces in the
WOrk of Negro Writers," Anger and Beyond, pp. 42-43.

 

136. See Chapter III, p. 124.

137. Camus, Sisyphus, p. 80.
138. Ibid., pp. 90, 91.

139. Esther Merle Jackson, "The American Negro and
the Image of the Absurd," Phylon, XXIII (1962), 364.

140. Abraham H. Maslow, Toward a Psychology of
Being (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 19687,
p. 97.

141. Langston Hughes, "Harlem," Black Voices, p. 430.
142. Richard Wright, "The Literature of the Negro

in the United States," White Man, Listen! (Garden City:
Anchor Books): P. 72.

 

143. Wright, "Literature of Negro in U.S.," White
Man, Listen!, p. 101.

 

CHAPTER IV

THE REBEL AND THE ISOLATE

The longer Wright remained exiled in France, the
more he was accused of neglecting his southern origins.
In this respect, reviewers were especially critical of

The Outsider, written while Wright lived in Paris. One

 

critic, Saunders Redding, went so far as to say that "In
going to live abroad Richard Wright had cut the roots that
once sustained him. . . ."1 Having resided abroad for
several years before writing this novel, Wright undoubtedly
did lose touch with some of his American heritage. And,
caught as he was in the maelstrom of French existentialism,
he couldn't help but create a book highly influenced by
this philosophy. Furthermore, his own background had al-
ready led him independently to many of the same conclusions
the existentialists were reaching. As Wright said of this
relationship after reading Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus,
and Sartre; "'they are writing of things that I have been
.."2

thinking, writing and feeling all of my life.

What Wright developed in The Outsider is a hybrid;

 

a book whose main character has ancestors spanning two
centuries not only in the American Adams of Hawthorne,
Melville, Twain, James, and Fitzgerald, but also in the

166

I: J

167

dispossessed outsiders of Dostoievski, Mann, Sartre, Camus,
and Genet. Cross Damon is the double helix of American
innocence and European nihilism. He is more alienated than
his American predecessors and more influenced by his
environment than his European contemporaries. Like Bigger
Thomas before him, he is the result of a complicated battle
among the forces of naturalism, Marxism, Freudianism, and
existentialism. He spouts existential precepts but remains
an example of man trapped by his background and surroundings.
Cross Damon can be regarded as a prototype of more
recent American heroes, the rebel-victims identified by

Ihab Hassan in Radical Innocence. Instead of creating

 

the last of the American Adams, Wright created the first
of the modern American anti-heroes. Therefore, a reasonable
alternative to dismay at Wright's failure to create American
homespun would be frank admiration for a man who dared to
meld the foreign and the near, who recognized the inherent
existentialism in the black man's American experience before
his critics did.

Stylistically, the book is not without flaw. For,
in presenting such a thoroughly existential hero, Wright
has employed some rather obviously contrived literary
devices-~some so contrived, in fact, that they weaken the
book's mimetic effect (for although the novel centers on
the working out of an idea, I believe that Wright was

attempting to create people rather than just phiIOSOphical

 

168

positions). The first of these contrivances is the extra-

ordinary coincidence that allows Cross to consciously

create a new identity: the subway accident and the mistaken

identity. (We must allow this, however, since Wright was

determined to give his hero absolute freedom; and the free-

dom had to arise from a conscious decision on Cross' part

to create himself unhampered by the past.) The second

series of patent inventions is the continual name-changing

that Cross undertakes. Part of becoming a person is taking

a name, and Cross takes several as he attempts to discover

what he is going to be. Initially he becomes Charles Webb,

an immigrant from the Deep South (an identity that occurs

to him as he listens to the blues in a cafe); ironically,

it is under this innocent alias that he murders his friend.

But he soon rejects this image of himself as a naive

immigrant. On the train to New York”, therefore, he

establishes himself as Addison Jordon, graduate of Fisk

University; under this pseudonym he meets and captures the

imagination of another outsider, Ely Houston, the deformed

district attorney of New York City. Cross' third identity

is that of a dead man, Lionel Lane--an appropriate identity
for a man who seems to have little respect for life.

A third point of weakness is that fact that the
Philosophy often takes over to the detriment of the story;
instead of illustrating, Wright explains.3 Long speeches

ruin the movement of the action. Yet, curiously, thiS

 

169

style is akin to that of one of the undisputed geniuses

of modern literature, i.e., Fyodor Dostoievski, who himself
often indulged in massive unbroken passages in which one
character lectures another, especially in The Brothers

Karamazov whose hero Ivan Karamazov is the philosophical

 

prototype of Cross Damon. Not only does Cross remind the

reader of Ivan, but also of the nihilist Kirilov in The

Possessed and the logical criminal Raskolnikov in Crime

 

and Punishment. Perhaps. Wright had Dostoievski's novels

and heroes in mind as models when he wrote The Outsider,
but Wright's own existential hero, Cross Damon, is too

intellectual and intellectualized to be sympathetic or

even very believable.4 In him lies no grand passion: he

is not possessed. He is another victim who cannot attain

tragic stature. Furthermore, as critics have noted, his

actions are seemingly often not even psychologically
motivated.5 And yet, all in all, the book remains a

fascinating conundrum. It is, perhaps, in the final

analysis, no more obscure or inconsistent than life itself.
The roots of Cross Damon in the American Adams are

Clearly defined in his sense of innocence, place, and self.

According to R.W.B. Lewis, the nineteenth century American

Adam is characterized by his loneliness and innocence and

his need to be tested by society. He is a Walt Whitman:

the SOlitary individual who arrogantly acknowledges that

he °
13 a self—made man:

170

He had to become the maker of his own condition--if
he were to have any conditions or any achieved
personality at all. . . . What is implicit in every

line of Whitman is the belief that the poet ro'ects
a world of order and meaning and identity into eitfier

a chaos or a sheer vacuum; he does not discover it.
The poet may salute the chaos; but he creates the

world.6

What more existential statement of the fact that man creates
Iris own values exists? Like the absurd heroes identified
by Camus who feel innocent, Whitman existed in a primal
irunocence, accepting all, rejoicing in all, and, like the
orniginal Adam, naming all. Cross Damon also feels strangely
innocent as he sets out to create a new life for himself:

It was for much more than merely criminal reasons

that he was fleeing to escape his identity, his old

hateful consciousness. There was a kind of innocence

that made him want to shape for himself the kind of

life he felt he wanted, but he knew that that
innocence was deeply forbidden.7

Eveml as he dies he clings to his innocence: "'. . . I'm
. . . I felt . . . I'm innocent. . . . That's what made
the horror. . . ."' (440).

Later American literature developed the concept of
‘the "fortunate fall," the need to go beyond innocence
through experience to a higher innocence, a Blakean
Progression. According to Lewis' interpretation of the
elder Henry James' thinking, "in order to enter the ranks
0f manhood, the individual (however fair) had to f_a_l_}_r
had to pass beyond childhood in an encounter with 'Evil, '

had to mature by virtue of the destruction of his own

egotism."8 The innocent must collide with society, undergo

171

its initiation rituals even though they may be painful and
dangerous.9 This is the same pattern that Hassan identifies
in modern American heroes, who are "personified by the
converging figures pg the initiate and the victim."10

For Lewis the history of American fiction involves
"the noble but illusory myth of the American as Adam"11

since America has known both guilt and innocence; or as

Hassan tells it, the American was both "dreamer and rapist."12
Thus the heroes--Natty Bumpo, Billy Budd, Captain Ahab,

Donatello, Jay Gatsby--are caught in the web of evil and

somehow aid it in its conspiracy. Yet, for Lewis, these

outsiders differ in kind from the more devastatingly alienated

European heroes :

The Adamic hero is an 'outsider,' but he is
'outside' in a curiOusly staunch and artistically
demanding manner. He is to be distinguished from
the kind of outsider--the dispossessed, the superflu-
ous, the alienated, the exiled--who began to enter
European fiction in the nineteenth century andlxgho

crowds its almost every page in the twentieth.
These American Adams are not skeptics driven to the
despairing shores of nihilism, but pilgrims trying to

return home. In their more contemporary counterparts,

they are the absurd, faintly ironic heroes who in a sort
of bungling way attempt to find a place for themselves

in society. They are Bellow's Augie March, Updike's

Rabbit Angstrom, Malamud's Frank Alpine.

But Cross Damon, born of this same background,

remains significantly different, more akin to Faulkner's

172

Joe Christmas than Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown. Al-
though he would deny it, not the least of these deviations
from the model American Adam is Cross' color. ("There was
no racial tone to his reactions; he was just a man, a_ny_ man
who had had an opportunity to flee and had seized upon it"
[86]. And "being a Negro was the least important thing in
his life" [288].) That is to say, he is an American Adam
by virtue of some of his qualities: his loneliness, his
feeling of innocence, his desire for community. Moreover,
he has obvious connections with Whitman, who also stood on
a precipice and created himself and to Jay Gatsby who was
corrupted by the society he tried to conquer. But his
alienation is more extreme than theirs. As a result of
his race he has never been and never will pg an integral
part of the American fabric. And because he has always
Stood outside life, he has never really participated in
the heritage of his own people, although he does identify
With the jazz he hears in a bar, and the first of his new
identities is that of a Negro from the Deep South. But
at other times he tries to dissociate himself from his race,
Claiming he does not act the way he does because he is
black. Wright is obviously trying to go beyond the tension
0f black and white relations to the larger question of what
is a man. To do this he creates a man presented with the
unlikely opportunity of being able to create a brand new
life for himself. Therefore, when Cross leaves Chicago

h . . .
e relinquishes hlS place in the world. He becomes a man

173

without a name, without. a home, without a past. Having

given up on the world of Gladys, Dot, and Joe Thomas, he

must invent his own.

This is where his relationship to the European
heroes of the last two centuries begins to appear. This
:is where wright begins to reveal, after years of fictional
suilence, his response to the ambience of French and German

existentialism. Unquestionably his most philosophical book,

The Outsider often suffers from its author's preoccupation

 

with resolving the two horned dilemma of existentialism

and Marxism, the same conflict that had appeared earlier

in Native Son. In fact, the major conflict of The Outsider

revolves around the ideological battle between Cross Damon,

existentialist, and the hierarchy of the communist party--

both extemists: one in favor of absolute freedom, the

other advocating total repression. Obviously, after thir-

teen years Wright was still searching for a satisfactory

answer to the meaning of existence. Both Cross and Bigger

have remarkably the same problems and experiences, as

 

Darwin Turner has observed in his article "The .OutSider:

ReVision of an Idea."14 Bigger is poor, alienated, and

unhappy. Cross, although educated and able to earn good

money, is in debt, alienated from the world of white and

black men, and dissatisfied with life. Bigger, because of

his lnarticulateness, is more an object of our compassion

a O O 0
8 he cries out in horror and rage. But Cross merits our

174

.attention as an example of the quandary of modern man.
After all, Cross is testing the validity of nihilism as

he acts out a ritual that measures the consequences of

being an existentialist. He is our surrogate self searching

for grace through violence. Hassan has a provocative dis-

cussion of this prOpensity toward fictional violence in

his chapter "The Modern Self in Recoil." There he quotes

Mann as saying that "'certain attainments of the soul and
intellect are impossible without disease, without insanity,

without spiritual crime, and the great invalids are

crucified victims, sacrificed to humanity and its advance-

ment, to the broadening of its feeling and knowledge. . .'"15

But violence, Hassan goes on to say, "has no reality in the

public realm, the domain of action"; instead it "seems

almost the ultimate form of introspection . . . the experi-

ence of world negation."l6 Wright not only seems to say
that black men on any social level are outsiders in search
of meaning and acceptance but that all men--black and
White--are caught in this trap whereby they must destroy

to create.17 Man, shackled by traditions and institutions,

mUSt break out of these confines through crime and

rebellion in order to discover himself. Once free, a

man ironically yearns for companionship, but it is denied

him Since he has earned his freedom through violence against

Society. The wound is too great to heal.

175

Communism tempts these disaffected men by offering
them the promise of security and individual freedom. But
in truth it means oppression and a stifling of expression.
Existentialism offers a true freedom, but it is so complete
that its followers seem doomed to isolation. They learn

like Antoine Roquentin in Sartre's Nausea that all men are

free and alone:

I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself
from thinking. At this very moment-~it's frightful--
if I exist it is because I am horrified at existing.

£_am Epg_one who pulls myself from the nothingness to
whiEh I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing,
there are as many ways to make myself exist to thrust

myself into existence.1

wright was torn between a society that offered
brotherhood but demanded absolute loyalty and a philosophy
trust offered freedom but required absolute isolation.
Understandably, neither was entirely attractive to him,
so he chose the middle ground. He opted for freedom but
erJBd out for brotherhood. Of all the existentialists
Camus seems to come the closest to this position as he

argues for a mutual respect for freedom and the right to

live. He says,

‘the first progressive step for a mind overwhelmed by
the strangeness of things is to realize that this
feeling of strangeness is shared with all men and
tfliat human reality, in its entirety, suffers from the
Ciistance which separates it from the rest of the
tuaiverse. The malady experienced by a single man
becomes a mass plague . .. . I rebel--therefore we

exist.

.[UDIhe 'We are' paradoxically defines a new form of
1J1dividualism. 'We are' in terms of history, and
htistory must reckon with this 'We are' which must in

176

its turn keep its place in history. I have need of
others who have need of me and of each other. Every
collective action, every form of society, supposes a
discipline, and the individual, without this disci-
pline, is only a stranger, bowed down under the
weight of an inimical collectivity. But society

and discipline lose their direction if they deny

the 'We are.’ I alone, in one sense, support the
common dignity that I cannot allow either myself or
others to debase. This individualism is in no sense
pleasure; it is perpetual struggle, and, sometimes,
unparalleled joy when it reaches the heights of proud
compassion. ~

Hazel Barnes says in an introduction to Being and

Nothingness that Sartre has given us his only real illus-

 

tration of the existentialist hero's personal ethics in

his play The Flies. Orestes, free from the will of the

 

gods, courageously and stubbornly accepts the total burden

of guilt from his people:

He gives up the role of spectator and voluntarily
commits his freedom to the cause of the people of
Argos. He is willing to give up his peace of mind
for the sake of suffering. . . . In short he accepts
the tension of absolute freedom and total re-
sponsibility.20

This same freedom and responsibility Bigger Thomas takes

on himself at the end of Native Son. Orestes' reward is

 

banishment; Bigger's is death. Since both men have chosen
to express themselves through murder, both of them have to
relinquish their place in society. Cross Damon encounters
a Sindlar situation. He too struggles to balance freedom
and. responsibility, and his reward is alienation and
deatih at the hands of the communists. Rather ironically,
time so—called institution of brotherhood destroys the

individualist.

177

But other institutions had been slowly eroding Cross'
manhood and identity all through his life. The institution
of marriage, of the government in the guise of the postal
officials, of religion-~each has had a hand in his destruc-
tion just as other institutions have ruined Bigger who

is executed by a capitalist democracy . . . Damon is
murdered by Communists. In the revision, as in the
original, Wright suggested that the sensitive,
questioning individual, the existentialist, will be
destroyed by the organized institutions which fear
him because they do not understand him and fear his
questions because they cannot answer them.21

.Although the freedom for self-actualization is denied Cross

and Bigger, let it not be thought that Cross is as sympa-

‘thetic a character as his progenitor. Bigger's is the cry

(of a hunted animal. We can pity him. Cross we fear. He

:is too logical to be pitied. Certainly in him we recognize

CNJr own dilemma, but his crime is so great and his reasoning

SK) pat that we watch his downfall more objectively.22 In

rusting his own emotional uninvolvement with Wright's hero,

Cfluarles Clicksberg calls the novel a "magnificent failure,"

eXplaining that although it is

A metaphysically searching novel, it is psychologically
unmotivated and therefore largely unconvincing. . . .
By resorting to murder, the protagonist effectually

alienates the sympathy of the reader.
I3igger, the adolescent anti-hero who discovers himself

'tllrough murder, is but a mild forerunner of the truly

<2riminal hero, Cross Damon. Identified by David Galloway

£153 a distinct type of absurd hero in contemporary fiction,24

178

the hero as criminal has its genesis in the continental

fiction of Camus, Dostoievski, and Genet.

The precursors of the desperate criminal philosopher
apotheosized in Cross Damon can also be found in the early
writings of Wright himself. Before Damon, however, the
heroes have a certain inherent innocence about them, often
in line with the picaresque which the reader can sympathize

*with. Whereas Damon, the culpable criminal, feels innocent,

-these boys are made to feel guilty for simply existing--

‘their very lives are a crime. And certainly their motiva-

'tions for murder, whether of a mule or a man, are more

loelievable than Cross' who seems to murder out of cold,

Ipassionless logic. Or as Charles Glicksberg observes,

'NZross . . . kills out of a feeling that he has transcended

£311 human laws and broken the bond that ties him to humani-
tfi’."25 In contrast, in an early story, "Big Boy Leaves

Ihdme" (1936),26 four young blacks begin a lazy idyll in
tune sun that ends in sudden violence and death for them.

By coupling this outrage with descriptions of the boys'

Euasy grace in nature, Wright has added a certain pathos

‘t<> the old story of man's inhumanity to man. Young

isérvages at home in the fragrant honeysuckle, the boys laugh
Eirui dance with a charming insoucience,27 although their
lainguage illustrates the poverty of their lives and dreams.
Finishing their forbidden swim in a muddy creek, they

Startle a white woman with their nakedness. Ironically

179

reversing the mythological archetype of Actaeon spying on

Diana in her bath, Wright comments convincingly on the

sickness of southern society. Forced to kill or be killed

for violating the sensibilities of a white woman, Big Boy

shoots the woman's male companion.
Counterpointing the bucolic atmosphere of Part I,

Part IV reeks of total violence. Seeking revenge for their

<outraged female-~their murdered friend seems to be of

secondary importance--the whites of both sexes track down,

Inutilate, and burn Big Boy's friend, Bobo.
Obliged to hide in a damp kiln on the hillside, Big

IBoy'continues his initiation into violence. Having killed

21 man, he seems destined forever to kill other creatures

le order to live. Whereas he felt at home in nature at

Shinrise, by sunset he has seen its denizens as his enemies.
131 order to occupy the kiln he must beat a rattlesnake to
death; to conceal his hiding place he must strangle a
kfiLoodhound. The south has forced one more black boy to
lieave home burdened with premature manhood.

Even Bigger Thomas, for all his cunning and killing,

3153 but a child in search of an identity. His first murder

$155 accidental, his second a desperate act to survive.

T“71'-l<3n he reaches the high point of self-realization, he is

jubilant and cocky--chi1dlike. No longer fearing death,

1163 «challenges fate and dies, we presume, triumphantly.

180

Cross Damon, on the other hand, is a total criminal.
He kills out of expediency and from a will to power.
Through him Wright explores the possibilities of absolute
alienation where man becomes his own company, confessor,
and god. This is Man Alone, who, without help, creates
his own values, his own identity, his own world.

Albert Camus created an analogous titan in Caligula,
who commits himself to death and destruction at the expense
of others. Through his devotion to logic and truth,
Caligula insulates himself from mankind, rejecting friend-
ship, values, and love. As Camus says of his despot,

But, if his truth is to rebel against fate, his error

lies in negating what binds him to mankind. One can-

not destroy everything without destroying himself

. . . Caligula is the story of a superior suicide

. . . Ealigfifa accepts death because he has under-

stood that no one can save himself all alone and

that one cannot be free at the expense of others.28
Wright's hero also builds his freedom at the expense of
others: "Bad faith wasn't unknown to Cross; not only had
he long been guilty of it in his personal relations, but
he was convinced that bad faith of some degree was an
indigenous part of living" (187). He steals his freedom
from the three women to whom he is committed by law or
<ieed: his mother, his wife, and his pregnant mistress.
Ike maintains his freedom by murdering his friend. He
(unbellishes his sense of freedom by wantonly murdering two

rmen, a fascist and a communist locked in deadly combat,

negating the purpose of either murder by killing both

181

ideological paradigms. Later, he again retains his freedom
by murdering a man who could turn him in to the police.
He camouflages his true nature, deceiving Eva Blount, wife
of one of his victims, to such an extent that she falls
in love with him and eventually kills herself when she
discovers his real identity.

The truest relationship he has with another is with
Ely Houston, the District Attorney of New York, whose
humped back has made something of an outsider of him.
Bantering with this man, Cross theoretically reveals his
criminal nature through analogies that Houston is quick
to jump on as familiar and true, admitting the cliché
that he is a cop since he could so easily become a criminal.
Before dying Cross confesses to this man that his mistake
had been in trying to make it alone. His cry of "'it
was . . . horrible'" (440) reminds one strongly of Kurtz's

in The Heart of Darkness where that dying man cries out,

 

"'The horror.'"

Ironically Wright's heroes seem only capable of
realizing themselves through destroying others. In so
ckbing they isolate and alienate themselves, achieving the
anytithesis of what they desire: love and brotherhood.
Evsan Cross Damon, hard and ruthless as he is, longs for
<Xflnpanionship, for someone to talk to:

'Weren't there somewhere in this world rebels with whom

he could feel at home, men who were outsiders not
lbecause they had been born black and poor, but because

Ii
I a
til-Quinlan
fl:

182

they had thought their way through the many veils of
illusion? But where were they? How could one find
them? (28).
But every time that someone tries to get close to him, he
backs off, afraid. Against his will, however, he is inexo~
rably drawn into conversation with Ely Houston; realizing
the dangers involved, he is nevertheless so hungry for
talk with a kindred soul that he boldly sets forth his
philosophy to this man who understands only too well what
he is saying.

To anyone even marginally familiar with the writings
of Richard wright, the motifs of criminality and violence
stand out as the watermarks of his work. For the source
of this violence we may look to his own life, a combination

29

of deprivation and denigration. Attacked verbally and

physically by his own family and the whites he worked with,
wright learned as a child the despair of the downtrodden.
To compensate he turned to rebellion, rejecting the
teachings of his own race and the laws of the other. As
a result, his Self was in continual conflict with the rest
of the world. This state is normal for blacks, according
to George Kent, who says that
The self is battered by the white racist culture, and,
for the most part, by a survival-oriented black
culture, that counters the impulse to rebelliousness
and individuality by puritanical repressiveness,
escapism, and base submission. . . . And out of that
strategy [of supressing the individual] comes an
overwhelming impact. Tension, raw violence and

impending violence, which evoke, psychologically, a
nightmare world in the light of day.30

183

In an attempt to escape the confines of the Deep South,
young Richard Wright engaged in petty thievry. And once
safely ensconced in Chicago, Wright lashed out against
society through his activities in the Communist Party.

Given a start through the WPA, Wright soon learned that
people would listen to what he wrote. After the publication

of his short story collection Uncle Tom's Children and his

 

novel Native Son, Wright became a national figure, the

 

father of new black letters. All his life Wright worked
cannily from this position to publicize his distaste for
white American society. For him that was the source of
black violence.

Chronologically (except for those in his first and

last novels, Lawd Today and The Long Dream), Wright's heroes

 

 

move from a sort of innocent rebellion to a more intel-
lectualized and nihilistic violence. His early heroes,
appearing in his short stories, are invariably misjudged

or accused unjustly. Thus, Big Boy must leave home because
of the mores of southern society. Johnny—Boy is slaughtered
for his political beliefs just as Reverend Taylor is

beaten for his. In order to save his own family during

a flood Mann must kill a white man; after saving the

family of the man he has killed, Mann is predictably
betrayed by them and shot while trying to escape. For

him as for so many of Wright's heroes, the only true

escape is death; e.g., Silas ("Long Black Song"), Fred

184

Daniels ("The Man Who Lived Underground"), Johnny-Boy ("Bright
and Morning Star"), Bigger Thomas, and Cross Damon--all die to
escape the harsh realities of life.

For James Baldwin, the reason behind Wright's
violence lies in his fear of sex. Unwilling to include
sexuality in his work, Wright supposedly sublimates this
inadequacy through his vivid scenes of violence.31 Although
Baldwin is correct in assessing the state of Wright's
literary sex as impoverished, I am convinced that wright's
concentration on violence arises from areas other than
the Freudian. Early in his career a proletarian novelist
and always a protestor, Wright used violence as a tool to
express outrage. The violence done to him and his people
is compensated for fictionally. His heroes retaliate
where he could not.32 Placed in revelatory climactic
situations, these cornered protagonists strike out often,
maiming and murdering the aggressive whites. Bigger
Thomas, for example, finding himself twice in impossible
circumstances, murders each time a helpless girl, one
white, one black. Unable to cope with the hostile world
that has suddenly turned against him, he acts as he has
been conditioned to: he murders in self-defense. Naturally
this is not the classic self-defense that would hold up
in court since neither girl could do him any physical harm,

but these are just as truly acts of self-preservation.

185

Bigger himself illustrates the tendency in Wright's
heroes to progress from innocence to experience. His first
murder is an accidental one that nonetheless marks him as
a brutal sex killer. His second murder is purposeful but
filled with a sort of pathos as Bigger kills the only living
thing that seems to have had any feelings for him. At the
end of the novel, Bigger has reconciled himself to both
murders, seeing in them the potential for self—realization.

Wright's next hero is more calculating and conse-
quently more frightening, for Cross Damon's journey, long
regarded as one of the finest examples of American literary

existentialism,33

is actually a peregrination through the
terrors of nihilism. Existentially free to determine his
life and identity, Cross Damon engages in rituals of
becoming by consciously seeking situations in which he
must make decisions vital to his character. "What he needed,
demanded, was the hardest, the most awful responsibility,
something that would test him and make him feel his worth"
(143). Crouched like an animal ready to spring, Cross
reminds one of Sartre's Mathieu whose "sole care had been
to hold himself in readiness. For an act. A free, con-
sidered act that should pledge his whole life and stand

"34 Both men are on

at the beginning of a new existence.
the fringe of life, never wholly committing themselves to
anyone else, both, as Mathieu's friend observes, possessed

of a freedom "'based on reason.”35 Moreover, both men

186

in their isolation would have cause to echo Pascal's con-
fession, "The eternal silence of these infinite spaces
terrifies me" (Pensées, Sec. III, no. 206).

For brave as the existentialist must needs be, he
has his sharp moments of doubt and despair. And words such
as "fear," "dread," "despair," and "anxiety" not only
describe the temper of the time that brought existentialism
to its head, but are key terms in the jargon of its spokes-
men. These are the words that appear with disturbing regu-
larity in the pages of Kierkegaard, Tillich, Sartre, and
Heidegger. These too are the messengers of darkness that
Richard Wright chose to describe the tortured soul of Cross
Damon, outsider.

Because these words have special meaning in the
language of the existentialists, and because Wright was
cognizant of their esoteric use-~employing them for the
most part quite precisely--it is important to review
their philosophical denotations.

Cross Damon is haunted by a pervasive sense of
uneasiness and insecurity that he variously labels "fear,"
"dread," and "anxiety." For Kierkegaard, Tillich and
Heidegger these terms are not wholly interchangeable since
"fear" is not to be confused with gpggp (translated as
either "dread" or "anxiety").

Tillich. Anxiety and fear have the same ontological

root, but they are not the same in actuality. . . .
Fear, as opposed to anxiety has a definite object

187

. . . which can be faced, analyzed, attacked, endured.
One can act upon it, and in acting upon it participate
in it--even if in the form of struggle. In this way
one can take it into one's self—affirmation. Courage
can meet every object of fear, because it is an object
and makes participation possible.36

Kierkegaard. One almost never sees the concept dread

dealt with in psychology, and I must therefore call

attention to the fact that it is different from fear

and similar concepts which refer to something definite,

whereas dread is freedom's reality as possibility for

possibility. One does not therefore find dread in

the beast, precisely for the reason that by nature

the beast is not qualified by spirit.37
Although one can assume that Tillich's book appeared after
Wright had completed the bulk of his thinking about The
Outsider (Tillich's book appeared in 1952; Wright's 1953),
both Tillich and Kirkegaard shed light on what Wright was
attempting here in his exploration of modern man's soul.
Thus when Wright mentions Cross' "fear" he is illustrating
what Tillich calls "anxiety" and Kirkegaard "dread."

Another philosopher that Wright was familiar with

at the time he was writing The Outsider who also made a

 

distinction, however abstruse, between "fear" and "anxiety"
was Martin Heidegger:

That in the face of which we fear, the 'fearsome,’ is
_ — — — — F O I I

in every case something which we encounter Wlthln-
the-world. . . .

Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards
its ownmost potentiality-for-being--that_is, its
Being-free-for the freedom of choosing itself and
taking hold of itself. Anxiety brings Dasein face
to face with its Being free for (propensio i3 . . .)
the authenticity of its Being, and for this
authenticity as a possibility which it always is.

 

 

 

 

188

That about which anxiety is anxious reveals itself as
that in the face of which it is anxious--namely,
Beingzin-the-worldT

 

As a state of mind . . . the phenomenon of‘anxiet *
will be made basic for our analysis. In working out
this basic state-of-mind and characterizing ontologi-
cally what is disclosed in it as such, we shall take
the phenomenon of falling as our point of departure,
and distinguish anxiety from the kindred phenomenon
of fear. . . .38
For Heidegger as for Tillich and Kierkegaard, "fear" has
a definite object; angst whether translated as "dread" or
"anxiety" has no object, being instead the reaction of a
man to the possibility of his becoming himself.

Although he occasionally deviates from the existen-
tial philosophers' definitions of "dread" and "fear,"
[Wright in most instances distinguishes between the two.
For example, Cross is "afraid of himself" (119), afraid
of getting caught for his crime (122), afraid of Ely
Houston (127)--all quite identifiable and specific objects
to cope with and overcome, althOugh his fear of himself
admittedly leads to the more indefinite sense of dread.
Another of his fears stems from his dread. After Cross
has escaped from the subway.wreck we learn that he is

"afraid of his surroundings and he knew that his sur-

roundings did not know that he was afraid" (86). This

 

*

Editor's footnote to Being and Time: "'Angst'.
While this word has generally been translated as 'anxiety'
in the post Freudian psychological literature, it appears
as 'dread' in the translations of Kierkegaard and in a
number of discussions of Heidegger. In some ways 'uneasi-
ness' or 'malaise' would be more appropriate still" (p. 227).

 

189

fear seems to originate from a more indefinite.sense of
anxiety in the face of his freedom; i.e., because he is
creating a new life for himself by rejecting his old identi-
ty, he must isolate himself from his former environment.
He thus faces his new surroundings entirely naked, without
a past, without a sense of self in relation to the world.
It is a frightening experience. Instead of being able to
rely on the past to give himself an identity, he must depend
on the future to "determine what and who he was to be" (87):
In a way, he was a criminal, not so much because of
what he was doing, but because of what he was
feeling. . . . There was a kind of innocence that
made him want to shape for himself the kind of life
he felt he wanted, but he knew that that innocence
was deeply forbidden (86).
Even though Cross "loves this" magnificent opportunity to

explore the full implications of freedom,

All of his life he had been hankering after his
personal freedom (84).

That all men were free was the fondest and deepest
conviction of his life. . . (87).

he is still terrified by its prospects; "to map out his
life entirely upon his own assumptions was a task that
terrified him just to think of it. . ." (91).

But as Part I's title suggests, gpggp is nothing
new to Cross. All his life, in fact, he has been plagued
by a persistent sense of dread, a legacy bequeathed him
by his mother: "his dread had been his mother's first

Ifiateful gift to him" (17), a result of her grief over

190

her husband's death. To compensate for her hurt, she turned
to God, teaching Cross not only to fear Him, but to shun
all aspects of physical desire. Her admonitions, however,
only heighten his desire for desire and he begins to
regard the God of love as the God of hate, the everlasting
No. As a child he experiences existential dread, dis-
covering that

his sensibilities had not been repressed by God's

fearful negations as represented by his mother; indeed,

his sense of life had been so heightened that desire

boiled in him to a degree that made him afraid.

Afraid of what? Nothing exactly, precisely. . . .

And this constituted his sense of dread (18).
Having given up his old life, Cross is nearly consumed by
terror and dread brought on not only by the necessity for
inventing himself but also by the fact that he is absoé
lutely alone. His "appalling loneliness" haunts him,
especially after he witnesses his own funeral (119):

He was empty, face to face with a sense of dread more

intense than anything he had ever felt before. He

was alone. He was not only without friends, their

hopes, and loves to buoy him up, but he was a man

tossed back upon himself when that self meant only

a hope of hope . . . Nothing made meaning; his life

seemed to have turned into a static dream whose

frozen images would remain unchanged throughout

eternity (lOlf).

Like other Wright heroes, Cross' life has been a
series of dream images, a nightmare. In Part I wright
mentions this phenomenon frequently: "the nightmare that
was life" (14); "life . .'. had the disorganized character

<IE a nightmare" (25); "he felt trapped in a nightmare"

(39); "he felt unreal, scarcely alive" (48). As part

191

of his dream he kills his friend Joe Thomas when he runs
into him in the brothel.

After this murder while he is on the way to New
York, Cross realizes that the source of his dread is him-
self:

He was free from everything but himself. . . . As
the train wheels clicked through the winter night,
he knew where his sense of dread came from; it was
from within himself, within the vast and mysterious
world that was his and his alone, and yet not really
known to him. . . . (117).
Because he does not know himself well and hates himself
pretty thoroughly, he is afraid of himself. Out of this
fear and pervasive dread arises a sense of unreality.
Thus Part II is fittingly entitled "Dream." In this
section Cross meets Ely Huston, assumes the identity of
Lionel Lane, and finally meets the communist Gil Blount
whose ideas awake Cross to a new challenge, ending his
dream.

By the beginning of Part III, "Descent," Cross has
concluded that communism can become the impetus he needs
to discover himself:

It was an emotional compulsion, religious in its
intensity, to feel and weigh the worth of himself that
was pushing him into the arms of the one thing on
earth that could transform his sense of dread, shape
it, objectify it, and make it real and rational for
him (188).

But by the end of the section dread is still with him, and

Iris life has been converted to a terrifying nightmare by

theadouble murder he has committed:

192

He had acted, had shattered the dream that sur-

rounded him, and now the world, including himself in

it, had turned mockingly into a concrete, waking

nightmare from which he could see no way of escaping

(231).
The nightmare is a good metaphor for dread since it is an
expression of what one desires in negative images. More-
over, since Cross' all-consuming interest is to create a
self ("his decisive life struggle was a personal fight for
the realization of himself" [142]), and since he has
complete freedom to do so, he is continually plagued by
a sense of dread. It is understandable that his days have
an aura of unreality about them.

Like the history of modern existentialism, which

is generally conceded to have begun with S¢ren Kierkegaard
Wright's history of a single existentialist begins with an
epigraph from Kierkegaard:39

Dread is an alien power which lays hold of an indi-

vidual, and yet one cannot tear oneself away, nor

has a will to do so; for one fears what one desires.
It is freedom that Kierkegaard refers to, and it is a
freedom beyond our wildest imaginings that Cross Damon
realizes in Part I. For Kierkegaard, dread is_a state
experienced only by humans ("the less spirit, the less
dread") and it is unalterably tied in with man's ability
to determine himself--"dread is freedom's reality as
TDOssibility for possibility."40 Man, horrified with this

freedom, reacts ambivalently to it, unable to "flee from

dread, for he loves it"; unable to love it "for he flees

193

from it."41 Kierkegaard describes dread as the "dizziness
of freedom which occurs when the spirit would posit the
synthesis [of soul and body], and freedom then gazes down

into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain

itself."42 It is this "possibility of Freedom" that chills

Damon when he realizes the task he has set before himself

in accepting total freedom. For he, unlike other men, can

toss out the past and begin with the present to create

himself, to answer the question, "What is a man?"

This state of not yet being what one will be, of
realizing the distinctness of self from past and future,
and the resulting necessity for continually choosing in

order to create this self (without external values),

Sartre calls "anguish." As he writes in Being and

N_°thingness,

First I am not that self because time separates me
from it. Secondly, I am not that self because what
I am is not the foundation of what I will be.
Finally I am not that self because no actual
existent can determine strictly what I am going
to be. Yet as I am already what I will be (other-
wise I would not be interested in any one being
more than another), I am the self which I will b__e,
in the mode o_f not being 1t. . . . Anguish 1s
prec1sely my consciousness —of being my own future,
in the mode of not- being.43

Anguish is essentially "consciousness of freedom. And
this freedom is "characterized by a constantly renewed
Obligation to remake the its}; which designates the free
being":44

Thus the Future qua Future does not have to be. It
is not ip itself, and neither is it in the mode of

194

being of the For-it-self since it is the meanin of
the For-itself. The Future is not, it is possiglized.
. . . The Future is.the continual possibilization of—
possibles. . . .45

Early in The Outsider Cross argues that "'A man creates

 

himself'" (51; see also pp. 85, 91, 123); he knows, there-
fore, that by his actions he is creating himself. The
tragedy is that he becomes what he has set out to destroy:
a god-like man who pitilessly tramples and exploits other
men, breaking the bond of humanity-—making promises he
cannot keep:

He knew that he had cynically scorned, wantonly
violated, every commitment that civilized men owe,
in terms of common honesty and sacred honor, to
those with whom they live. That, in essence, was
his crime. The rest of his brutal and bloody
thrashings about were the mere offshoots of that
one central, cardinal fact. And for the crime of his
contemptuous repudiation of all the fundamental
promises that men live by he intended to make no
legal defense, for the good and ample reason that
he knew no such defense was possible (374).46

Besides suffering from the anguish of not yet being
himself, Cross also exhibits signs of anxiety as defined
by Tillich; i.e., "anxiety is the state in which a being

is aware of its possible nonbeing. . . . It is the

"47

existential awareness of nonbeing. It is a fact of

existence appearing as three separate but related types:

Nonbeing threatens man's ontic self-affirmation,
relatively in terms of fate, absolutely in terms of
death. It threatens man's spiritual self-affirmation,
relatively in terms of emptiness, absolutely in terms
of meaninglessness. It threatens man's moral self—
affirmation, relatively in terms of guilt, absolutely
in terms of condemnation. . . . In all three forms
anxiety is existential in the sense that it belongs

 

 

n. d“ '4}. Ia and :1. . .NNIHHd
fl _

195

to existence as such and not to an abnormal state of

mind as in neurotic (and psychotic) anxiety.
The simultaneous presence of all three types of anxiety in
man results in the ultimate state of "despair" where being
is aware of its own nonbeing--the despair within despair.
The agonies of this state are so excruciating that man
longs to be rid of his being--to escape despair. If despair
were only a quality of ontic anxiety, the solution would
be suicide: negation of self. But despair is also a
product of moral anxiety (guilt and condemnation), which
cannot be alleviated by suicide. As Tillich says,

Guilt and condemnation are qualitatively, not

quantitatively, infinite. They have an infinite

weight and cannot be removed by a finite act of

ontic self-negation. This makes despair desperate,

that is, inescapable.49
Spiritual anxiety is also intimately involved with ontic
and moral anxiety as elements of despair. But again there
is no escape from it. Although the anxiety of emptiness
and meaninglessness as an instance of finitude could be
relieved by suicide, insofar "as it is a consequence of
moral disintegration it produces the same paradox as the
moral element in despair: there is no ontic exit from

it."50

The impulse to suicide is based on futility.
Obviously man attempts to avoid despair since once
he encounters it he has great difficulty in overcoming it.

And, as Tillich hastens to add, most men successfully

escape this desperate situation. But Cross Damon does

196

not. Precipitating himself inexorably into the abyss of
despair, he becomes the epitome of modern man: lost, alone,
frightened.

The anxiety of fate and death is basic to human
existence; it is universal, inescapable. And, as a sensi-
tive man given to introspection, Cross is vividly aware
of nonbeing and its threat to his being. Anxiety of fate
centers on man's awareness that he has "no ultimate

necessity."51

A student of modern philosophy, Cross
admits this absurdity. "'Maybe man is nothing in par-
ticular,’ Cross said gropingly. 'Maybe that's the terror
of it'" (135). Self-individualization seems to intensify
anxiety of death: as Cross asserts himself more and more
boldly (and finds someone to love), he increasingly abhors
the idea of death (having earlier contemplated suicide,
p. 13). The anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness--
most common in modern man--arises from the loss of Man's
"spiritual center, of an answer . . . to the question of
the meaning of existence."52 Haunted by his own meaning-
lessness and the absurdity of the human condition, Cross
strives to create meaning for himself without having to
sacrifice himself. He recognizes that his mother (and
Sarah eventually) surrenders her being to the church in
return for meaning (hers is the courage to be a part).

He identifies this same impulse to avoid doubt and in-

security in the communists, especially in Menti whom he

.1113... . r

197

sees as having totally sacrificed himself in order to escape
spiritual anxiety; to him
Menti was a hireling . . . who had offered his mean-
ingless, self-despised existence to the Party to be
used, ravaged, dominated, and filled with a purpose,
any purpose as long as the burden of the responsi-
bility for his own life was lifted from his shoulders
(334).

By this stage in his life, Wright had little sympathy
left for the communists; his hero is equally disgusted by
fascists and communists, branding them both societies of
little gods. Tillich views a man who joins a totalitarian
movement as one without the courage to be himself, arguing
that

He flees from his freedom of asking and answering for
himself to a situation in which no further questions
can be asked and the answers to previous questions are
imposed on him authoritatively. . . . Meaning is saved,
but the self is sacrificed. . . . Fanaticism is the
correlate to spiritual self-surrender: it shows the
anxiety which it was supposed to conquer, by attacking
with disproportionate violence those who disagree and
who demonstrate by their disagreement elements in the
spiritual life of the fanatic which he must suppress
in himself. Because he must suppress them in himself
he must suppress them in others. His anxiety forces
him to persecute dissenters.
For these reasons Cross could never submit to organized
religion or communism: although he despairs, he never
considers relinquishing his total freedom--he embraces it
and its comcomitant horrors. It is life.

The threat to moral self-affirmation, the anxiety
Of self—rejection and condemnation, also plagues Cross.
Man.is given certain materials to work with, but he is
Ultimately responsible for what he does with himself.

Tillich says that

 

Jnn. ! I I Elli..-

198

Man is essentially 'finite freedom' . . . in the sense
of being able to determine himself through decisions
in the center of his being. Man, as finite freedom,
is free within the contingencies of his finitude. But
within these limits he is asked to make of himself
what he is supposed to become, to fulfill his destiny.
In every act of moral self-affirmation man contri-
butes to the fulfillment of his destiny, to the
actualization of what he potentially is . . . man
has the power of . . . contradicting his essential
being, of losing his destiny. And under the conditions
of man's estrangement from himself this is an actuali-
ty. 54

Cross recognizes this burden and self-consciously attempts

to create himself. But what he creates horrifies him. He

draws himself a monster and recoils from its image.

As a result of his total submission to all three
types of anxiety, Cross plunges into despair. Having been
an outsider all his life, when he loses faith in himself,
he finds the world to be absurd, devoid of meaning. In
this purposeless existence, Cross finds direction in abso-
lute nihilism where all is permitted. As a consequence
of this solution he becomes a criminal.

This type of total criminal is not unknown in modern
literature. It appears in Crime and Punishment where
Raskolnikov murders an old woman because he should be able
to. It appears in the writings of Jean Genet who apotheo—
Sized Notre Dame des Fleurs. But it appears in greatest
similarity in the fiction and philosophical treatises of

Albert Camus. Caligula, for example, could be read as an

exegisis of The Outsider. And both Caligula and Cross

 

are: understood more fully after a reading of The Rebel

199

in which Camus explores the characteristics of metaphysical
rebellion.

Much of Cross Damon's behavior can be explained in
terms of Camus' concept of rebellion.55 In this famous
study Camus poses the question of paramount importance to
our age: can murder be justified? To answer satisfactor-
ily, Camus ranges gracefully throughout the metaphysics
and politics of the last two hundred years, concluding
paradoxically that a man can murder only if he then consents
to his own death as proof of the community of man. Like-
wise, Richard Wright, through his hero Cross Damon, explores
the ultimate question of life today. Although Camus'
philosophical essay is much the more sophisticated, Wright's
novel is no minor study of the nadir of nihilism and
despair.

In his introduction Camus distinguishes between the
two major types of crime: those of passion and those of
logic. He finds the latter to be the hallmark of mid-
twentieth century life. "We are living," he says, "in the
era of premeditation and the perfect crime." And when
crime appears innocent, "it is innocence that is called
upon to justify itself."56 His essay delves into this
strange reversal of values. For Camus, crime becomes
extraordinarily dangerous when it begins to reason abOut

itself, to justify itself through logic.

200

Cross Damon is an intellectual criminal. He is not
driven to murder through passion (love or hate); he is not
pathological. He kills because he believes that he has
the perfect right to. He holds himself innocent--even at
death. He is the paradigm of Camus' logical criminal-—
just as perfect as Caligula.

According to Camus, absurdist reasoning neither
permits nor forbids murder. On the one hand, it seems to
forbid it since suicide has been proven untenable as it
negates one half of the absurd thus releasing all tension.
"Murder cannot be made choerent when suicide is not con-
sidered coherent."57 Yet nihilism, which also finds no
meaning or values in life, accepts suicide and therefore
murder (Ivan Karamazov's "'everything is permitted'" leads
naturally to murder). But absolute negation is "not
consummated by suicide. It can only be consummated by
absblute destruction, of oneself and of others. . . . The
moment that we recognize the impossibility of absolute
negation--and merely to be alive is to recognize this--
the very first thing that cannot be denied is the right
of others to live."58

Since the absurd cannot give man a set of values to
live by, Camus turns to its one truth, protest, for guid-
ance:

Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality,
confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible

condition. But its blind impulse is to demand
order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very

201

heart of the ephemeral. It protests, it demands, it

insists that the outrage be brought to an end, and

that what has up to now been built upon shifting

sands should henceforth be founded on rock. Its

preoccupation is to transform. But to transform is

to act, and to act will be, tomorrow, to kill, and

it still does not know whether murder is legitimate.59
Camus concludes that since the primary feature of rebellion
is its desire for unity and order, murder and rebellion are
logically contradictory. And yet, in order to affirm that
which is noble in man, men are often forced to kill. In
these cases, the murderers must accept their own deaths
in order to reaffirm the primary value, the community of
man. For what a man wants for himself he cannot deny to
others, unless he too is willing to make the ultimate
sacrifice-~his own life.60

A desire for order also consumes Cross Damon. For
example, he kills Hilton because he is convinced that
Hilton is determined to make him a slave by controlling
his life, curtailing his freedom.' Like Ivan Karamazov
he cannot tolerate what he calls meaningless suffering--
anyone therefore who inflicts it on another must be
stopped:
'I might forgive you Hilton if you had been going

to kill me. But, no; you were going to make me a

slave. . . . I'd have suffered, night and day. You

would have dominated my consciousness. No, no, Hilton,

there's more here than you say. Goddammit, there ig!

If not, then why all this meaningless suffering? If

you had killed me, that would have been a simple

act . . . but why turn a consciousness into a flame

of suffering and let it lie, squirming. . . ? No!‘
(301).

202

Possessed by outrage, Cross kills Hilton as a protest
against coercion, ironically depriving the man of what he
demands for himself--the freedom to control his own destiny--
and thus breaking the code of rebellion.

In his brief life Cross Damon stumbles into all the
pitfalls available in the history of rebellion: he forgets
his bond with humanity; he desires to replace God; he turns
to murder to express himself. But his original rebellion
is certainly justified. Although he denies that it has had
an influenCe on his personality, the fact that he is a
black man in America is of primary consequence. He is of
an oppressed people in a powerful and "free" country; his
heritage is slavery. As Nathan Scott said in 1964,

Though it is only in the occasional pockets of
Southern depravity that the Negro is still exposed
to the nakeder forms of violence and intimidation,
he knows that the actuality of the American experi-
ence continues to involve for him that most unhinging
kind of frustration which is a result of the glitter
and promise of life in a great country being near
enough for the mind to be dazzled by the sense of
their availability, and yet far enough away to exact
a sense of defeat more exacerbating than anything a
slave could possibly feel.61

Similarly, Camus reasons that the "spirit of rebellion
can exist only in a society where a theoretical equality

"62 Therefore, when

conceals great factual inequalities.
Cross accepts his freedom, turning his back on his mother,
his mistress, and his wife, he is in reality saying "no"

to the world of white America. At the same time he is

saying "yes" to himself and the central value he feels he

203

as a human being has a right to.. He is saying, as Camus
notes slaves have said before, "'up to this point yes,
beyond it no.'"63 He affirms himself and begins a journey
into the interior of rebellion whose outcome he could not
have foreseen at the moment he first said "no":

But from the moment that the rebel finds his voice--
even though he says nothing but 'no'--he begins to
desire and to judge. . . . With rebellion, awareness
is born. . . . The rebel himself wants to be 'all'--
to identify himself completely with this good of
which he has suddenly become aware and by which he
wants to be personally recognized and acknowledged--
or 'nothing'; in other words, to be completely
destroyed by the force that dominates him. As a last
resort, he is willing to accept the final defeat,
which is death, rather than be deprived of the
personal sacrament that he would call, for example,
freedom. Better to die on one's feet than to live
on one's knees.64

This determination to control one's own destiny reminds

one of Milton's Satan in Paradise Lost who states boldly

 

that it is "'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven'"
(1. 263). As Satan pays for his rebellion by being thrown
out of heaven, contemporary existential heroes pay for
theirs by being condemned to a living hell and an early
death. For example, at the end of his journey into the
self, after a baffling and stultifying life, Bigger Thomas
must die for his new—found freedom. And Cross Damon, who
self-consciously embarks on his voyage of rebellion at the

outset of The Outsider, is nearly torn apart by the night—

 

mare of nihilism; and he too dies violently, murdered by

godless tyrants.

204

Cross' first trial as a newly declared rebel occurs
in the shabby hotel where he stays after the train wreck.
Having decided to opt for freedom, Cross suddenly comes
face to face with his past--a post office buddy, Joe Thomas.
Surprised into an immediate decision, Cross kills him to
protect his new life. Through this brutal murder Cross
has broken a cardinal rule of rebellion by destroying in
another what he claims for himself. Moreover, his value
judgments become cloudier as he progresses down the avenue
of nihilism, in contrast to this killing which was a matter
of expediency since he had to quiet the one person who
could ruin his chances for a new life. And if we regard
Joe as the symbol of Cross' old life--his servitude--he
is just one more object that Cross rebels against. After
this encounter Cross is truly free. But his further
actions are not so easily understood as he murders two men
without reason-—and feels no need of having one. Ely
Houston puts his finger on Cross' attitude when he says
that this "'mythical killer'" is a man who believes "'That
no ideas are necessary to justify his acts. . .'" (282).

Implicit in Cross' activity is his protest against
God. He does not deny God--he replaces him. His is a
thoroughly metaphysical rebellion. Not only is he a slave
protesting his servitude, but he is also a philosopher
outraged by his status as a man, horrified at the cor-

ruption and unhappiness of the world. He thus aligns

205

himself with other men against God--the personal, enig-

 

matic God who in Ivan Karamazov's scheme allows small
children to be brutalized ("'all I know is that there is
suffering and that there are none guilty. . .'").65 This
is a calling to account of the god of love, and as far as
modern man is concerned he has been weighed in the balance
and found wanting. The handwriting is on the wall. As
Camus observes,

When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel

realizes that it is now his own responsibility to

create the justice, order, and unity that he sought

in vain within his own condition, and in this way

to justify the fall of God. Then begins the

desperate effort to create, at the price of crime

and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.66
Instead of being content to rebel against God, the hero

organizes a coup: he will replace God. Kirilov, in

Dostoievski's The Possessed, believes that the secret to

 

man's dominion was through the first truly purposeful
suicide; he dies to prove that he is God, that death has
no hold on him. He dies for all the world, to begin an
era of man-gods (his order). Cross Damon is convinced
that all men are atheists and that this means "'that I,
and you too, can do what we damn well please on this
earth'" (360).

The route to establishing man's dominion lies in
the dark corridors of nihilism--of absolute negation.
According to Camus, "the history of contemporary nihilism

really begins" with Ivan Karamazov's "'everything is

206

permitted'"; like Caligula, Ivan "compelled himself to do

evil so as to be coherent."67

(Ivan: "'I must have justice,
or‘I will destroy myself. And not justice in some remote
infinite time and space, but here on earth, and that I

could see myself.'")68

Both heroes suffer the consequences
'of their terrible logic: Caligula is murdered (dying
happily, finally aware of the utter futility and absurdity
of life), and Ivan is driven mad by the paradoxes inherent
in man's replacing God, e.g., "to become God is to accept
crime."69 Cross also realizes the implicit terror in
becoming a god when he says,

'Damned is the man who must invent his own god! Shun

that man, for he is a part of the vast cosmos; he is

akin to it and he can no more know himself than he

can know the world of which he is in some mysterious

way a part. . .' (360).

Instead of taking the absurd and making it their

god, as David Galloway asserts American absurd heroes do,

 

these continental heroes apotheoSize themselves. Logically
then they become criminals. This is the journey of Cross
Damon, from innocent victim (slave) to disingenuous criminal
(god). Yet somehow in all his final culpability he retains
his innocence. For his is the radical innocence--the
anguished cry--that drives him to murder in order to assert
himself and deny the horror of existence.

Because of his allegiance to his logic, Damon is
forced to commit an otherwise irrational or illogical crime.

Discovering a fascist and a communist engaged in bloody

 

207

battle, Cross kills both, confounding the pedestrian minds
of the police who cannot accept a theory of a third man,
outside the realm of morality. The only man capable of
imagining such a rarity is Ely Houston, himself an outsider.
It is he whom Cross fears because he knows this man can
grapple with the intricate twistings of a logic that would E
not only allow but demand that he murder both philosophical
sides to protest the fact that they would deny him his

absolute freedom. After expressing his outrage through

 

murder, Cross justifies the deed to himself as a blotting
out of two "little gods" (230); ruefully he later admits
to having played the god himself.

This propensity for acting like God has characterized
Cross for years. For example, in the book's early expository
scenes Cross' buddies reminisce jovially about the day that
Cross tossed some loose change out of an eleventh story
window. Watching the people scramble like idiots for the
money, Cross had said that "'that was the only time he ever
felt like God'" (5). Detached throughout the anecdote,
Cross hears his friends laughingly identify him as "'a
man standing outside of the world'" (6).

Although he is an outsider, like Nietzsche he is
a man who accepts the full responsibility of nihilism.
For Nietzsche nihilism was a transitional stage to a more
meaningful existence; he believed that man must move from

a state of innocence through experience to a state of

208

higher innocence. In this venture man travels alone, with
no religious baggage to thwart his progress. Nietzsche
observed that God is dead and rejected Christianity because

it posited false values for a nonexistent world; according

to him,

The supreme values in whose service man should
live, especially when they were very hard on Him and
exacted a high price-~these social values were erected
over man to strengthen their voice, as if they were
commands of God, as 'reality,' as the 'true' world,
as a hope and future world. Now that the shabby
origin of these values is becoming clear, the universe
seems to have lost value, seems 'meaningless'--but
that is only a transitional stage.

The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of

nihilism. We have measured the value of the world

according to categories that refer pg §_purely
fictitious world. 0

Nietzsche would have denied Christianity even if its god
were not dead. But he observed that God truly is dead
and proceeded to explore the consequences of this fact in
nineteenth century Europe.

For Nietzsche the world g§_ip exists now is the

 

source of all value; therefore he affirms everything in
the world. History is dethroned; nature deified. And in.
this godless world the burden lies solely on man to define

his values and himself. In The Rebel, Camus refers to

 

Nietzsche's concept of responsibility, saying that

From the moment that man believes neither in God nor
in immortal life, he becomes 'responsible for every-
thing alive, for everything that, born of suffering,
is condemned to suffer from life.‘ It is he, and

he alone, who must discover law and order.71

W. - _. W... . 0‘?“( ‘ fl" I i? '13. a 0:4

209

Or as Kirilov says to Peter Verkhovensky, "'If God exists,
then the whole will is His and I can do nothing. If He
doesn't exist, then all will is mine and I must exercise
my own will, my free will.'"72 Man as God must create
law since in total freedom chaos reigns and no man is free.
Nietzsche replaces Ivan Karamazov's "'everything is
permitted'" with the alternative "'if nothing is true,
nothing is permitted.'"73 The individual submerges him-
self in the "destiny of the species and the eternal move-
ment of the spheres."74 Nature--the world itself-—becomes
God. One thus says "yes" to everything in the world:
In a certain sense, rebellion, with Nietzsche, ends
again in the exaltation of evil. . . . It is ac—
cepted as one of the possible aspects of good and,
with rather more conviction, as part of destiny.75
Total approbation thus allows the possibility of murder.
Either way metaphysical rebellion turns, it destroys,
according to Camus:
Each time that it deifies the total rejection, the
absolute negation, of what exists, it destroys.
Each time that it blindly accepts what exists and
gives voice to absolute assent, it destroys again.
Hatred of the creator can turn to hatred of creation
or to exclusive and defiant love of what exists.
But in both cases it ends in murder and loses the
right to be called rebellion. One can be nihilist
in two ways, in both by having an intemperate recourse
to absolutes.76
Whether the rebel desires death for himself or for others,
he is nonetheless striving for order and value. Preferring

as a consequence "generalized injustice to mutilated

justice":

 

210

The victims have found in their own innocence the
justification for the final crime. Convinced of
their condemnation and without hope of immortality,
they decided to murder god. . . . From this moment,
man decides to exclude himself from grace and to live
by his own means.77

In The OutSider Hilton expresses this attitude when

he tries to argue Cross out of killing him, "'What the

hell is there so important about men dying?'" (300). Cross

counters with an attack on the communists' method: that
of inflicting suffering rather than outright merciful
killing. His inability to accept meaningless suffering
mirrors Ivan Karamazov's; so he swears, like Ivan, to

keep fighting against the unfairness of the world:

[Eva:] "'But I thought you were against brutality
. . . I thought you hated suffering--'"

[Cross:] "'I do!’ he shouted. 'That's why I did it!
I couldn't stand the thought of it, the sight

of it. . . 1'" (401).
Although he claims to be a reluctant victim of his com-
pulsiOns to set the world straight, he can't quit. He
can't stop the one thing that keeps him trapped: his
continual killing:

'I won't stop; I can't stop as long as men like
you keep playing your dirty games,‘ Cross said; and
there was a genuine despair in his voice. 'I won't
ever feel free as long as you exist, even if you
aren't hunting me down. You and men like you are
my enemies' (299).

Rebellion, having become a revolution, looks to replace
the reign of grace with that of justice.

To rebuild an empire from the rubble of ruined

religion, rebellion must annex the world, encompass all

211

men, carry freedom to the corners of the universe. Rebel-
lion becomes a crusade:
Henceforth, with introduction of moral nihilism, it
will retain, of all its acquisitions, only the will to
power. In principle, the rebel only wanted to conquer
his own existence and to maintain it in the face of
God. But he forgets his origins and, by the law of
spiritual imperialism, he sets out in search of world
conquest by way of an infinitely multiplied series of
murders.
Cross ruminates on the will to power and its implications
after observing the communists in action: "Suppose Gil
was right in assuming that the Party was justified in
coercing obedience from others purely on the basis of its
strength? What was there, then, to keep an individual
from adopting the same policy? Apparently nothing save
cunning and ruthlessness. . ." (189). He has come a long
way since the epiphany he had when he murdered Joe Thomas,
his friend. Up until that point his running had had little
reality to it. But once he learns that he can murder, he
destroys the possibility of turning back.g| e Commits
himself to a new life by taking another's.

Feeling essentially free of guilt, Cross admits to
being lonely--an aloneness he felt even while he had been
with Gladys and Dot. A new breed of man, he is conscious
of his difference and fears his own absolute dedication
to self-preservation. This fear is compounded by other

emotions: the anxiety of having no identity and the alarm

of a hunted animal.

212

His attitude toward the priest whom he meets on the
train to New York clarifies his feelings about religion.
He considers him a savage. Cross is the new man, the rebel
who must create his own values without religious guidance.

He

had to discover what was good or evil through his own
actions, which were more exacting than the edicts of
any God because it was he alone who had to bear the
brunt of their consequences with a sense of absolute-
ness made intolerable by knowing that this life of
his was all he had and would ever have (123).

This passage lies in the shadow of a more famous one by

Sartre found in his lecture, L'existentialisme est EB

 

humanisme (1946), where he states,

 

Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist,
and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find
anything to depend upon either within or outside him-
self. He discovers forthwith, that he is without
excuse. For if indeed existence precedes essence,

one will never be able to explain one's actions by
reference to a given and specific human nature; in
other words, there is no determinism--man is free,

man is freedom. Nor, on the other hand, if God does
not exist, are we provided with any values or command
that could legitimize our behavior. Thus we have
neither behind us, nor before us in a luminous realm
of values, any means of justification or excuse. We
are left alone, without excuse. That is what I mean
when I say that man is condemned to be free. Condemned,
because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless
at liberty, and from the moment that he is thrown into
this world he is responsible for everything he does.

Cross' first action after coming to this same con-
clusion that he is responsible for everything he does is
to defend a black waiter against the hysterical accusations
of a white woman. But later he betrays this same impulse

by giving the man a false name and address thus destroying

213

his hopes for a fair hearing before his union and the
railroad.

Cross' constant denial of the demands of others on
him illustrates his basic deviation from the true metaphysi-
cal rebel, who, we remember, protests in the name of all
men. At Bob Hunter's apartment, for example, he realizes
that his feeling of alienation stems from his disregard of
other men. He had had the-

illusion of feeling at home with these outsiders, but
now he felt himself being pushed more than ever into
that position where he looked at others as though they
weren't human. He could have waved his hand and
blotted them from existence with no more regret than
if he were swatting a couple of insects. . . . In his
eyes their value as human beings had gone. . . (171).
It isn't until he is near death that Cross finally realizes
the inalienable bond men have with one another. His only
emotional tie had been with Eva Blount, wife of one of the
communists he killed.’ But Cross also kills Eva--indirectly
but decidedly when she leaps from a window to her death
upon discovering the monster that he is.

Cross simply will not allow himself to be manipulated
by other people. He is totally free--too free, as he ob-
serves. But his situation is metaphoric of Everyman who,
as Sartre says, is condemned to be free. This absolute
freedom is a grave responsibility, as Nietzsche knew. And
at one time Cross recognized the societal implications of

this freedom to act and create, realizing that "he alone

had been responsible for what he had done to Gladys and

214

Dot" (142). But as he exercises his new found freedom--
gazing with despair at its limitless depths--he progres-
sively becomes more and more god—like, removed from humanity.
He forgets to affirm life. He breaks all promises:

It was not because he was a Negro that he had found

his obligations intolerable; it was because there

resided in his heart a sharp sense of freedom that

had somehow escaped being dulled by intimidating

conditions. Cross had never really been tamed.

. . (376).

Fascinated by the will to power of the communists,
Cross is lured into a deadly combat of the will with these
gods. He begins to live; his trance-like state evaporates.
He struggles valiantly, but he loses. And he loses because
the communists work from such a limited perspective that
they cannot grasp the motives of a "psychological" man.
They cannot believe that his battle is not a personal
vendetta but an intellectual detached struggle--a cool
game of chess. Because of their near-sightedness, their
failure to admit any subjectivity in men, they misjudge
Cross, eventually shooting him as a counter-revolutionary.
Although they will ultimately destroy him, Cross'

initial response toward the communists is ambivalent,
comprised of disgust and admiration. For what they preach
totally opposes his philosophy, since they require him to
release his will to them, to negate himself, to "blot out
his life and only listen to the Party" (183). Yet he

understands them. He admires their power, the fact that

they have found an answer to live by-—to rule by. They

215

are the new Grand Inquisitors, the mutant offspring of
Nietzsche-~the spoiled fruit of nihilism.

In another epiphany Cross grasps the key to Com-
munism: power. It is, he recognizes, deeper than religious
intensity, more sensual than sexual passion. It is a
strategy of life, of binding man to man:

They had reached far back into history and had dredged
up from its black waters the most ancient of all
realities: man's desire to be a god. . . . What these
men wanted was . . . power, not just the exercise of
bureaucratic control, but personal power to be wielded
directly upon the lives and bodies of others (199).
Determined to recruit Cross for the Party, Gil Blount
demonstrates the potential of this power that leaves men
sniveling and mewling. Cross again is simultaneously
fascinated and repelled; the psychological truths stun
him and the object cowering of the victims disgusts him.
He obviously sides emotionally with the masters and scorns
the slaves (an unusual position for a metaphysical rebel).
And like Tillich, Cross sees that such systems can tolerate
no rivals--especially the subjective voice of the arts:
The violent reactions against modern art in collec-
tivist (Nazi, Communist) as well as conformist
(American democratic) groups show that they feel
seriously threatened by it.
The creators of modern art have been able to see the
meaninglessness of our existence; they participated
in its despair. At the same time they have had the
courage to face it and express it in their pictures

and scul tures. They had the courage to be as them-
selves.8

216

This courage to be appears in Eva Blount, a young expres-
sionist painter who exhibited before her marriage to Gil
Blount, a communist. At that point she was forbidden to
display her works publicly, since the communists feared

her message of independent thinking. Cross perspicaciously
identifies this same jealousy of power in fascisim, capi—
talism, and religion. "Cross . .9. marveled at the astute-
ness of both Communist and Fascist politicians who had banned
the demonic contagions of jazz" (200). Any organization
that wants man's minds cannot allow freedom of artistic
expression in painting, drama, or novels.

Unfortunately, although Cross is determined to fight
the enemy, he falls prey to its tactics. In a flame and
darkness scene straight out of Hawthorne, Damon murders
Blount, the communist, and Herdon, the fascist. Soon
afterwards, Cross mulls over his deed. It suddenly seems
terribly complicated to him. He has killed two little
gods without regret, but he himself "had acted like a
little god. . .":

he had assumed the role of policeman, judge, supreme
court, and executioner-~all in one swift and terrible
moment. But if he resented their being little gods,
how could he do the same? His self-assurance ebbed,
his pride waned. . . . He had been subverted by the
contagion of the lawless; he had been defeated by
that which he had sought to destroy . . . had taken
on the guise of the monster he had slain (230f).

To destroy the little gods he must himself become a god.

And to become god is to murder. Cross is torn with the

217

rebel's eternal dilemma: that of having to fight evil
with evil:

To fight Hilton meant fighting Hilton on Hilton's

own ground, just as he had had to kill Gil and Herndon

on their own ground, and that in itself was a defeat,

a travesty of the impulse that had first moved him.

. . . Perhaps he was staring right now at the focal

point of history: if you fought men who tried to

conquer you in terms of total power you too had to

use total power and in the end you became what you

tried to defeat. . . (244f).
In fulfilling the prophecy of the section's epigraph from
St. Paul, "what I hate, that I do," Cross has taken his
place in the line up of other American heroes who are
confounded by that which they attempt to conquer. For
example, Young Goodman Brown who insists on avoiding sin
to such an extent that he breaks "the magnetic chain of
humanity" like Ethan Brand whose heart could not keep pace
with his head ("The sin of an intellect that triumphed
over the sense of brotherhood. . ."; both quotes from
"Ethan Brand"); and Captain Ahab who sailed in league with
the devil to slay his personal symbol of evil, the white

whale.

The next section of The Outsider, "Despair," records

 

the philosophical conversations between Cross and Houston
and Cross and Blimin; the first a dialogue of psychologi-
cally akin outsiders, the second more a monologue from an
independent god to a totalitarian one. Here also Cross
struggles to maintain meaning and falls in love with Eva

who becomes his goal for life. But she is an unblemished

218

innocent, a victim by chance; he is culpable, a victim by
choice. Eva is the only person he feels guilty about:

he feels uncomfortable in the knowledge of her submission
to him, in the fact that while he loves her he betrays her
trust. His despair increases.

And his only true psychological equal, Ely Houston,
D.A. and hunchback, terrifies him. He is the one man who
can admit the possibility of Cross' crime. He too is an
outsider, a criminal himself who holds himself in check
by tracking other aberrants. His basic impulse also
centers in the demonic. But he is dedicated to the control
of crime--he is, after all, Cross' most dangerous enemy.

It is to Houston that Cross had stated, "'Man is
nothing in particular'" (135). And it is this clue, coupled
with the myriads appearing in their later conversations,
that convinces Houston of Cross' guilt. Although the
action is slow, the dialogue reveals the heart of Wright's
thesis: that twentieth century man, a lawless outsider,
considers himself a god. The result is pure terror.

What Wright envisions on an individual level, Camus
had witnessed on the state level: the pogroms and con-
centration camps of German Nazism. Both men struggle to
find meaning in this world gone mad. Both come essentially
to the same conclusion that men must refuse to become gods;
that they must continually balance the yes and the no,

reaffirming always their basic responsibility to one

219

another--murdering only to destroy evil and then willingly
relinquishing their own lives to reestablish the community
of man. Man is metaphysically alone but morally bound to
others in a mutual sense of responsibility to life.

Since these modern men feel no need for outside
ideas to justify their acts, Houston says, "'A lawless man
has to rein himself in. A man of lawless impulses living
in a society which seeks to restrain instincts for the
common good must be in a kind of subjective prison'" (282).
When these men, for whom all ethical laws are suspended,
see a wrong they set out to correct it. Ironically,
according to Houston, they are conceivably the real law-
givers. Horrified by the inequities of justice as it now
exists, these rebels ignore its laws and create their own.
Religious morality is also junked. Houston calls these
men pre-Christian, men without the succor of myths (316
gt passim). And when the myths disappear, man returns.81
Again, this is a Nietzschean idea that Christianity is at
fault for nihilism's existence, having created false values;
man is compelled to reject them and create a new set that
affirms life as it is. History is rejected; nature
glorified.82

This is the basic difference between the rebels and
the totalitarians; for the latter, history is the justi-
fication of all acts. Their plans, programs, and actions

all look to the future for approval; the now has no

220

importance. In contrast, the rebels regard the present
as the only period of value. They do not prepare for future
justification; they seek it immediately.

Given the opportunity to reveal his rather Nietzschean
philosophy during a grilling by Blimin, Cross lashes out at
Communism, Fascism, and capitalism. Finding in all three
systems the drive to total power, Cross condemns them and
their industrial sources. As far as he is concerned the
dominant factor in human existence is fear:

'The degree and quality of man's fears can be gauged
by the scope and density of his myths; that is, by
the ingenious manner in which he disguised the world
about him. . . . Until today almost all of man's
worlds have been either preworlds or backworlds, never
the real world. . . . That real world man did not
want. . .' (356f).
Science and industry have together destroyed these illusive
myths. Religion is dead. All men are atheists. In Cross'
opinion,
'They live, dream, and plan on the assumption that
there is no God . . . [SJince religion is dead,
religion is everywhere. . . . Religion was once
an affair of the church; it is now in the streets
in each man's heart.‘ Once there were priests; now
every man's a priest' (359).
For Cross the implications of this situation lead directly
to Ivan Karamazov's "everything is permitted,'"
'Now, what does this mean—-that I don't believe
in God? It means that I, and you too, can do what
we damn well please on this earth' (360).
As a consequence, according to Cross, today's govern-

ments-~both totalitarian and democratic--prefer their

citizens to be ignorant of their moral freedom, since a

221

man who recognizes his absolute freedom is not to be
coerced or controlled. And because history to these
governments is of ultimate value, they rewrite events to
suit the needs of this new god. They are the Grand In-
quisitors who control men's minds by feeding them false
myths that require no thinking and allow no fear or dread.

At the top of the hierarchy are the truly modern men,

the men in power, the Jealous Rebels. Of all men, they
alone have had the courage to recognize the essential
meaninglessness of the world. They face the real world
and admit it is nothing beyond their own dreams. They
understand that the key to power is a psychological one.
Cross explains that

'Their programs are but the crude translations of the

daydreams of the man in the street, daydreams in

which the Jealous Rebels do not believe!

'In order to catch their prey, they deliberately
spin vast spiderwebs of ideology, the glittering
strands of which are designed to appeal to the hopes
of hopeful men. . . .

'Their aims? Direct and naked power! . . . They
are out to grab the entire body of mankind and they
will replace faith and belief with organization and
discipline' (364f).

And they have a good chance of succeeding (here Cross
sounds like a Marxist): industrialism's assembly lines
help by degrading the meaning of work and men's lives
(unions should not bargain for more money but for freer

men whose work is not alienating). Better communication

allows for stronger organizations. Commercial advertising

222

cheapens and devalues the individual personality. The
future leads inexorably to totalitarian systems. wars are
futile since war cannot destroy men's beliefs.

With this bleak outlook as his source of action,
Cross Damon takes the only way out. He steps out of
society, creates his own world and values. He becomes
his own god; therefore he murders and continues to do so
'until he himself is murdered by the Jealous Rebels he sought
not to fight but to understand. His engagement with the
members of the Communist Party has been an intellectual
war game. Thus he did not set out to destroy them, knowing
full well the futility of such a plan. Instead he used
them as a foil to test his ideas. Bouncing off their
philosophy he was able to synthesize his own. But it proved
a dangerous game that he lost: the stakes being his life.

Like the other Wright heroes we have studied, Cross
Damon is a neurotic.' Although much of what he does is
psychologically inexplicable, some aspects of his behavior
are defihitely the result of his neurosis. The solution
that Cross unconsciously has stumbled upon to,relieve.his
inner conflicts is that which Horney labels "the pattern

of streamlining . . . the attempt to suppress permanently

 

and rigidly one self and be exclusively the other."83 Thus
Cross attempts to be exclusively his expansive self. As

Horney characterizes this solution,

223

It chiefly entails his determinism, conscious or
unconscious, to overcome every obstacle--in or outside
himself--and the belief that he should be able, and in
fact is able, to do so. He should be able to master
the adversities of fate, the difficulties of a situ-
ation, the intricacies of intellectual problems, the
resistances of other people, conflicts in himself.
The reverse side of the necessity for mastery is his
dread of anything connoting helplessness; this is the
most poignant dread he has.34
Of the three subdivisions of this expansive type, Cross
best fits the category of "arrogant-vindictiveness."

Cross' need for revenge shows itself very nicely in
his scenes with his wife when he attempts to prove to her
that he is crazy so she will drive him out of the house.
When Gladys finally reaches a nervous frenzy and sends him
away, Cross feels good. This need also manifests itself
in his murder of Jack Hilton; as he admits to himself, "it
had been to rid himself of that sense of outrage that
Hilton's attitude had evoked in him, Hilton's assumption
that he could have made a slave of him" (305). He has no
intention of letting anyone control his life-~neither his
wife, his mistress, the postal officials, nor the com-
munists.

As Horney describes this type, "he is openly arrogant,
often rude and offensive, although sometimes this is
covered up by a thin veneer of civil politeness."85 Thus
Cross internally scorns the stupidity and weakness of his

acquaintances but is careful to maintain an air of shallow

friendliness. He joins in the barroom conversation, for

224

example, but does not really involve himself with his postal
buddies, remaining always a tolerant outsider, bemused by
their human failings. He acts the same way when he is

with Bob and Sarah Hunter.

Although the sources of Cross' neurosis could un-
doubtedly be found in the experiences of his childhood,
we are given very little evidence to support this. We
do learn, however, that Cross' father was a victim of a
race riot--so Cross must have learned early how whites
felt about blacks. He also must have begun at this time
to deny his positive feelings, his impulse toward love,'

86

because of the whites' hostility. This "hardening of

feelings, originally a necessity for survival," however,
according to Horney, "allows for an unhampered growth Of

the drive for a triumphant mastery of life."87

By the

time we begin our study of Cross he is in his late twenties,
well-established in his compulsion to be the master of his
fate.

Because he feels like an outsider, "he must prove
his own worth to himself."88 Horney's further descriptions
of the arrogant—vindictive type fit Cross perfectly:

For a person as isolated and as hostile as he, it

is of course important not to need others. Hence

he develops a pronounced pride in a godlike self-
sufficiency. . . . Having smothered positive feelings,
he can rely upon only his intellect for the mastery

of life. Hence his pride in his intellectual powers
reaches unusual dimensions. . . .89

225

If it is because of his insistence on being free that he
originally decides to take advantage of the accident, it
is because of his faith in his intelligence that he finally
takes on the dreadful task of creating a personality from
scratch. Competing with the communists in a game for his
soul is also an intellectual challenge to him, as are his
conversations with Ely Houston. In these talks Cross
intentionally posits obvious analogies to his own condition
just to see if Houston is up to recognizing their appli-
cation to him.
But as Cross' intellectual pride increases so does
his vulnerability. Horney:
Actually, as his pride becomes all consuming, his
vulnerability also assumes unbearable dimensions.
But he never allows himself to feel any hurt because
his pride prohibits it. Thus the Hardening process
. . . must gather momentum for the sake of protecting
his pride. His pride then lies in being above hurts
and suffering.90
Above being hurt, Cross can stand unemotionally by when
Houston brings in his wife and three small sons to test
his character:
Cross vowed that Houston would never see him humbled,
unnerved, or weeping. . . . He would make a supreme
effort and remain cold, hard. Sentiment must not
subvert him now. He was lost . . . but, he must not
let human claims drag him into a position where
Houston could crow over him (388f).
Houston is outraged with Cross' unconcern: "'You are the
lowest sonofabitch I've ever seen in all of my life'" (391).

As part of his feelings of impunity, Cross feels he

can do with others what he pleases. And so he abuses

226

Gladys, deserts Dot, fools Eva, and murders four men--all
seemingly without guilt. He also breaks all promises with
other people. "His own experience had shown him that he
was cold-bloodedly brutal when trapped in situations
involving his self-respect" (29).
Another manifestation of Cross' extreme neurosis
is the extraordinary depth of his self-hate. All through
the book he despises himself, often becoming overwhelmed
with feelings of self-loathing. As Horney has observed,
Such self-hate calls for rigorous self-protective
measures. Its externalization seems a matter of sheer
self-preservation. As in all expansive solutions, it
is primarily an active one. He hates and despises in
others all he suppresses and hates in himself: their
spontaneity, their joy of living, their appeasing
trends, their compliance . . . their 'stupidity'.
Cross, therefore, externalizes his own self-hate when he
sees Bob Hunter groveling in front of Gil Blount for his
life. Like other arrogant types Cross "has very little,

if any, sympathy for others."92

He is lacking in human
compassion basically because he envies others their place
in life, feeling himself to be outside it.

Finally, because of his need to deny his positive
impulses, Cross' self-hate convinces him that he is un-

lovable.93

Therefore, the one person he tries to love
must be sheltered from his true nature.

It isn't until he is on his death bed that Cross
realizes the futility of what he has tried to do. Motivated

by unconscious psychological factors and conscious philo-

sophical premises, Cross has attempted to live alone, in

227

complete control of his life. Given the unique Opportunity
of being able to create a new personality for himself, Cross
can do no better the second time around. Whether Wright
was suggesting that Cross' psychological makeup was irreversi—
ble or whether he was suggesting that modern man left to
his own devices would naturally end up in the depths of
nihilism is not clear; it is conceivable, of course, that
he was suggesting both. Whatever the argument behind
Wright's theme, his book is a bitter one. And the deathbed
conversion fails to leave the reader with either a sense
of relief or hope.

Perhaps Robert Bone is not too far afield when he

reads The Outsider as a "recapitulation of the author's

 

spiritual journey":
Books I and II are concerned with Wright's identity
as Negro; Books III and IV with his identity as
Communist; Book V with his identity as lonely
intellectual, disillusioned outsider, marginal man.94
Certainly the ultimate fate of the alienated man, the
rebel-victim, is total estrangement from society and then
from himself. And Cross Damon dies a stricken man,
frightened by his attempt to live as a free agent.

The initiate has come a long way by the closing

scene in The Outsider. He has been victimized, estranged,

 

outraged. And finally he has rebelled--at first timidly
and then arrogantly. Cross' story begins with his unhappi-
ness and unrest and moves rapidly after the accident into

the abyss of nihilism; an educated man and reader of

228

existential philosophy, Cross is usually aware of what he
does--that is one reason that his actions are so terrifying.
Wright also strongly suggests that Cross' color is not
necessarily the primary cause of his rebellion, although

it is always a potential factor in his behavior, especially
in regards to his determination to be his own master: it
takes someone whose control was severely threatened to be
so jealous of it.

The next story not only reveals the Negro as repre-
sentative of all men but also illustrates the inherent
guilt of all mankind. "The Man Who Lived Underground"
is a modern allegory that depicts the black man as the
symbol of man's isolation, loneliness, and despair. In
its call for brotherhood, moreover, the story is an
expansion of the theme expressed in the last scene of

The Outsider.

 

Although "The Man Who Lived Underground" was pub-
lished in 1944, its hero illustrates what I believe to be
the definitive stance of Richard Wright; that is, a plea
for brotherhood coupled with a dire warning of what can
happen if men are not given the full freedom to control
their own lives. It is a good story, a well-written,
tense piece which illustrates the major influences on

Wright's thinking, combining as it does elements of

229

Freudianism, Marxism, and existentialism——and continuing

as a result the eternal debate as to whether Wright's

heroes are individuals in their own right or simply mouth-
pieces of protest literature. Furthermore, "The Man Who
Lived Underground" is just enough the story of a black man

to raise the question of whether Wright is protesting against
the racial situation or the human condition.

But strangely enough, although it is one of Wright's
best and most provocative pieces, "The Man Who Lived Under-
ground" has received very little critical attention. More-
over, as we might expect from the divergence of critical
opinion surrounding Wright's other works, the critics vary
radically in their evaluation and interpretation of this
story. Some examples: Gloria Bramwell in a review of

Eight Men is displeased with what she calls Wright's

 

"inverse paternalism"; she also contends that the "pro-
tagonist is merely presented as an instrument for the
author's ideas. . . ."95 Irving Howe, on the other hand,
admires Wright's style, stating that he "shows a sense of
narrative rhythm, a gift for shaping the links between
sentences so as to create a chain of expectation, which

is superior to anything in his full-length novels. . ."96

Ronald Ridenour calls it "a magnificent short story";97
and Edward Margolies says that "Wright is at his story-

telling best."98 Robert Bone regards the story as an

extension of Wright's protest against racism, calling

230

"Wright's subterranean world . . . a symbol of the Negro's
social marginality."99 Conversely, Edward Margolies argues
that the hero "is not merely a victim of a racist society
'but' a symbol of all men in that society. . ."100
Most critics do agree, however, on the existential
content of the story. Stanley Edgar Hyman, for example,
calls it "pre-existentialist" (i.e., Wright naturally came
to existential conclusions in his writing--he did not
attempt to create an existential story: existence of the
story precedes its essence).101 Again, Ronald Ridenour
says that here "Wright expounds existential themes. . . .
There is an appreciable lack of the immediate, of the
ephemeral, and of the well-worn white-black conflicts."102
And Shirley Meyer remarks that the story "is a work which
is motivated by the existential vision."103
Besides being one of the best examples of Wright's

existential thinking, "The Man Who Lived Underground" is
also without question Wright's most surrealistic story.
Although it is presented as actually happening--not as a
subjective nightmare, but as objective reality-~its sur~
realistic overtones and descriptions argue for a symbolic
interpretation:

The reader may grant that the events of the short

story could possibly occur (improbability does not

give rise to the story's surrealistic quality), but

at the same time it seems that the events are in large

part a projection of unconscious forces lying dormant

within the psyche of the central character. The lack
of clear delineation in the story of internal from

231

external, of subjective from objective, is the source

of its surrealism.104
Because the storyis told entirely through the eyes of
Fred Daniels without any authorial intrusion, we see only
what Fred sees and see it only as he sees it.105 His view-
point controls ours completely; therein lies the diffi-
culty of trying to separate subjective from objective
reality. The story therefore has at least two levels.
Superficially, this is the story of an innocent man who
has been framed by the police and so is hiding in the
sewers where he gains a new perspective on life. Symbol-
ically, this is the allegory of the hero as Everyman who
journeys into the mouth of leviathan and tries upon
returning from the dead to save the rest of the world.
Because the story is tragic irony, the hero fails in his
quest: he dies and the land continues to be laid waste
by evil and corruption.

Although the critics are quick to point out the

existential nature of the hero's experiences, they seem
unaware of these archetypal patterns exemplified by his

adventures. And, after looking at The Long Dream from

 

this same archetypal perspective, it seems fairly reasonable
to suggest that "The Man Who Lived Underground" also fits
into Northrup Frye's mythos of winter, more specifically

in the sixth Or late phaSe of tragic irony which "presents
«106

human life in terms of largely unrelieved bondage.

The symbols appearing in this phase are, according to

232

Frye, generally parodies of those in romance, corresponding
to the demonic world. "In this low mimetic area we enter

a world that we may call the analogy of experience [there-

 

fore] the images are the ordinary images of experience.

."107 These images, however, take on unpleasant and

even sinister overtones because of their context.108 "Cities
take of course the shape of the labyrinthine modern, me-
tropolis, where the main emotional stress is on loneliness
and lack of communication." As another example, water
takes on negative connotations, becoming destructive in-
stead of life—giving. Frye calls this reversal of "customary
moral associations of archetypes" the phenomenon of "demonic
modulation."109

Thus, the setting for "The Man Who Lived Underground"
is appropriately the labyrinthine sewers of a modern me-
tropolis. As the controlling image of the story, this
symbol represents the decadence, aimlessness, loneliness,
and despair of the lives of the city-dwellers--and by
extension, all men. The story's other images-~the floating
debris, the dead baby, the corpse, the movie theater, the
church, the bloody cleaver, the suicide-~support the major
symbol by contributing to the general impression of iso-
lation, futility, and cruelty. The fact that no one will
listen to Fred illustrates the lack of communication among
people. Furthermore, in a typical demonic modulation, the

normally beneficent symbol of water has taken on sinister

233

aspects; not only does the water threaten to drown the hero
as it has apparently drowned the baby, but the very fact
that it is the city's sewage instils it with malevolence.

As one critic has pointed out, because we are so intimately
involved in the mind of the hero we do not immediately
regard these images as symbols, accepting them instead
simply as the conceivable experiences of a desperate man.110
It isn't until we begin to study the story that we realize
the significance of these "images of experience."

Besides inverting the symbols of romance, as its
parody, tragic irony also exhibits certain characteristic
patterns of romance. For example, the three-fold structure
of romance appears in tragic irony, specifically in "The
Man Who Lived Underground" "in the three-day rhythm of
death, disappearance and revival which is found in the
myth of Attis and other dying gods, and has been incorpo-

ulll

rated in our Easter. Furthermore, Frye notes that

tragic irony in its latest phase often uses what he calls

"112 This observation is important

"parody-religious symbols.
to Wright's story since Fred is underground three days and
nights and seems to rise again from the dead in a parody
of Christ's resurrection.

It is also pertinent to our study to look at some
of the manifestations of the symbolic displacement of the

dragon-slaying (which is the primary objective of the

quest-romance in its non-displaced form), since they appear

234

as parodies in low mimetic fiction such as "The Man Who
Lived Underground." Frye notes that the leviathan (the
biblical dragon), who is the enemy of Christ, becomes by
extension "the whole fallen world of sin and death and
tyranny into which Adam fell."113 Therefore the hero

Christ comes into the leviathan to save us. A more dis-
placed version has the hero travel in underground labyrinths
in place of the monster's belly. This pattern also appears
in solar myths "where the hero travels perilously through

a dark labyrinthine underworld full of monsters between

sunset and sunrise."114

Moreover, as Frye observes, the
"leviathan is usually a sea-monster, which means meta-
phorically that he is_the sea. . . . As denizens of his
belly, therefore, we are also metaphorically under
water."115 "Lastly," says Frye, "if the hero has to
die, and if his quest is completed the final stage of
it is, cyclically, rebirth, and, dialectically, resurrec-
tion."116
The watery labyrinth that Fred wanders in can be
seen, therefore, as the leviathan, symbol of death, sin,
and destruction--which works well in conjunction with the
fact that the leviathan is a sea-monster. In the belly
of the monster, Fred as Everyman is also in the heart of
the fallen world. Furthermore, although Fred does not

literally die in his first trip to the sewers, he does

lose his earthly identity by forgetting his name.

 

235

Ultimately, of course, Fred does find the leviathan the
body of death, for he is shot and left to die when he
returns to the sewers after his initial rebirth from them.
But here the cycle ends. There is no rebirth from death--
no resurrection. For the hero in the low mimetic mode,
death is final-~the displacement from the romance is
complete: the inverted Christ-figure is only too human.
According to Frye, the "quest—romance has analogies
to both rituals and dreams." Ritualistically, it is
related to the "victory of fertility over the waste land";
and in dream terms, it corresponds to the wish-fulfillment
dream.117 In tragic irony, however, the patterns are
reversed; i.e., the quest is foiled, the desert remains
eternal and the dream has become a nightmare.118 This is

Wright's vision of life not only in "The Man Who Lived

Underground," but also in The Long Dream, Lawd Today,

 

Native Son, and The Outsider-~and it is an apt metaphor.

 

 

As part of their nightmare Wright's heroes are continually
thwarted in their quest for love and acceptance; they
exist in a world that rejects them. It is truly a waste
land more than ready for the gentle rains from heaven.

But the land needs a hero to save it, and these heroes--
Fred and Bigger--are inarticulate, unable to communicate
with the world that so desperately needs their message.

The nightmare continues.

236

To describe his heroes'.sense of unreality Wright
often uses the phrase "waking dreams" in addition to
"nightmare."119 In this surrealistic world where time and
space are twisted and warped, all logical cause and effect
relationships are lost. As a consequence, wright's heroes
experience a curious alienation not only from other men but
from themselves and the world of reality. Constants like
right and wrong that we have grown accustomed to have no
validity for Cross, Bigger, or Big Boy. For theirs is a
sick world where innocent men are stalked like animals
and lynched, where criminals roam free tortured only by
their own conscience. It is a world where those in power
interpret the laws to suit themselves and let the rest be
damned. Truly, for Cross, Bigger, and Big Boy as for
Hamlet, another outsider by a quirk of fate and birth,
"The time is out of joint." Adrift on the periphery of
life, these men struggle to find some sort of meaning to
cling to. Stumbling through their waking dreams they
remind one of the persona in Roethke's poem who explains

paradoxically,

I wake to sleep, and take my waking flaw.
I learn by going where I have to go.

Wright begins his parable of Everyman with descrip-
tions of a nightmare world.121 This is a land of dark
shadows and corners, whose blackness is pierced by the

wail of a siren seeking an innocent man. This man, so

237

overcome with terror that he thinks he must be dreaming,
leaps into an open manhole where the nightmare is continued
and intensified. Once in the sewers he completely loses
contact with the world above. wright's impressionistic
descriptions heighten the sense of terror and foreboding:

From the perforations of the manhole cover,
delicate lances of hazy violet sifted down and wove
a mottled pattern upon the surface of the streaking
current. His lips parted as a car swept past along
the wet pavement overhead, its heavy rumble soon dying
out, like the hum of a plane speeding through a dense
cloud. He had never thought that cars could sound
like that; everything seemed strange and unreal under
here. He stood in darkness for a long time, knee-
deep in rustling water, musing.

Although he wants to leave this hell, he cannot, bound as
he is by an "irrational impulse" to stay (24). And so the
dream images flit by him, inviting his participation.
Wright's effective use of color contributes to the impres-
sion that Fred is in hell:
He went back to the basement and stood in the red
darkness, watching the glowing embers in the furnace.
He went to the sink and turned the faucet and the
water flowed in a smooth silent stream that looked
like a spout of blood. He brushed the mad image from
his mind and began to wash his hands leisurely, look-
ing about for the usual bar of soap. He found one
and rubbed it in his palms until a rich lather bloomed
in his cupped fingers, like a scarlet sponge (31).
While he is underground, frightened and terribly
alone, trapped by the "lure of darkness and silence" (his
desire for safety attracts him fatally to this moist,

dark womb of the world), he witnesses a montage of horrors.

He sees a "huge rat, wet with slime, blinking beady eyes

238

and baring tiny fangs" (24). He sees a baby "snagged by
debris and half-submerged in water" (27). Wright's imagery
is again superb:
Water blossomed about the tiny legs, the tiny arms,
the tiny head, and rushed onward. The eyes were
closed, as though in sleep; the fists were clenched,
as though in protest; and the mouth gaped black in
a soundless cry (27).
He sees his own people in church "groveling and begging
for something they could never get" (26). He sees the
waking dead watching a movie, reminding one of Plato's
cave: "They were shouting and yelling at the animated
shadows of themselves" (30). He sees an employee steal
money from a safe, another kill himself.

Fred's reaction to these nightmare scenes is one
compounded of pain, despair, and disgust. He identifies
with the blacks in church and wants to tell them to be
proud and unrepentant. He longs to warn the movie-goers
that they laugh at their own images on the screen. He
steals but considers his own thievery and the employee's
as two different things since he has no intention of
spending the money he stole. He regards the innocent man
who kills himself as really guilty--of something just by
virtue of being a man-eand so deserving to die.

Although innocent of murder, Fred himself feels
guilty, condemned (40). Guilty of stealing, he feels

innocent:

He did not feel that he was stealing, for the cleaver,
the radio, the money, and the typewriter were all on

239

the same level of value, all meant the same thing to
him. They were the serious toys of the men who lived
in the dead world of sunshine and rain he had left,
t2§)world that had condemned him, branded him guilty
Dread and anxiety torment him, yet he feels powerful,
indulgently refusing to kill the guard asleep at his feet.
He feels so distant from the rest of the world that its
values mean nothing to him, as though he were from a dif—
ferent planet. He knows that he cannot awaken these people
for they are "children, sleeping in their living, awake
. in their dying" (31). He has seen the world as it really
is--meaningless.
Finally, as part of the general meaninglessness of
things, "freddaniels" forgets his own name. Experimenting
with a new identity, he imitates a couple of white business-
men. Irrationally he rushes to paper his mud walls with
stolen money and lay his floors with diamonds. Recklessly
he winds all his stolen watches, not bothering to set them
since time has lost its meaning too. It has become just
another gimmick that man uses to hide life's meaningless-
ness from himself.
Then, the man with no name begins to think. And
what he discovers about himself frightens him:
Maybe anything's right, he mumbled. Yes, if the
world as men had made it was right, then anything
else was right, any act a man took to satisfy him-
self, murder, theft, torture (52).

If the way Fred has been treated is right--as the world

assures him it is-—then it follows that nothing is wrong.123

flaw-I4 I]; .1JEH
_. v

240

Horrified by these thoughts, the man tries to shove them
out of his mind, but he is drawn to them inexorably.
Fear, dread, anxiety—-the hallmarks of existentialism--
plague him as he tries to reason out his life. And like
Cross Damon his greatest source of dismay is himself,

He did not know how much fear he felt, for fear
claimed him completely; yet it was not a fear of the
police or of people, but a cold dread at the thought
of the actions he knew he would perform if he went
out into that cruel sunshine (59).

By the third day Fred begins to probe the cause of man's
essential guilt, discovering what Peter Verkovensky asserts
in The Possessed: "'We're all villains.”124 Fred asks
himself
Why was this sense of guilt so seemingly innate, so
easy to come by, to think, so verily physical? It
seemed that when one felt this guilt one was
retracing in one's feelings a faint pattern designed
long before; it seemed that one was always trying
to remember a gigantic shock that had left a haunt-
ing impression upon one's body which one could not
forget or shake off, but which had been forgotten
by the conscious mind, creating in one's life a
state of eternal anxiety (55).

Fred recognizes that what he finds in himself is
the same underground man that he has witnessed at work
in church, the funeral parlor, the jewelry store, the
theater. What he has discovered in the depths of the
earth is the message of nihilism: all values are de-
stroyed; nothing has meaning. Everything is permitted.

According to Margolies, he learns that

the nether world in which he dwells is the real world
of the human heart-~and that the surface world which

241

hums above him in the streets of the city is sense—

less and meaningless--a kind of unreality which men

project to hide from themselves the awful blackness

of their souls. He is invested suddenly with a sense

of pity for all mankind.125
Like a visionary, this low mimetic hero burns to communicate
his newly discovered truths to all people; overcome with a
feeling of goodwill, he feels he.can no longer remain in
the sewers while people in the streets continue in their
ignorance. He surfaces from the belly of leviathan to
save his people.

Out of the sewers after three days, the man runs
into the church he had seen from below to give the singers
his message. But he is thrown out as a drunk. Thus are
the true prOphets scorned. And like Jeremiah, Isaiah,
and Habbakuk, his own life is emblematic of what he
preaches. "He was the statement, and since it was all
so clear to him, surely he would be able to make it clear
to others" (62). He is the underground man realized in
full, symbolic of all men, as Margolies has observed:

"The underground man is the essential nature of all men--
and is composed of dread, terror, and guilt."1.26 But the
rest of the world chooses to ignore this inner core of
corruption and nausea, pretending it doesn't exist--
frantically buzzing from one activity to the next to keep
from thinking.

As a parody of them, Fred Daniels is very much like

the Old Testament prophets in many ways (perhaps Wright

242

was remembering the stories of his Old granny who was on
fire with evangelical religion).' Scorned and rejected
like they were, Fred Daniels is forced to live as an out-
cast. And while in the sewers he undergoes a transformation
that could be called a religious conversion. Alone, hungry,
with time at last to think, Fred has a vision. It is a
vision of a corrupt and meaningless world. Like the true
prophets before him, Fred sees gloom and despairs.127
Furthermore, like these prophets, Fred is mocked by the
men who need saving the most, here the police who have
framed him:

'All the people I saw was guilty,‘ he began slowly.

'Aw, nuts,‘ a policeman muttered (65).
What he hopes to do is instil these men With pity for the
sad condition of mankind by showing them what he has seen.
But, inarticulate, he cannot make his vision clear to
these men. And, like Daniel whose message displeased
Darius who thereupon cast him into the lions' den, Fred
Daniels, doomed prophet of a new order, is shot in the
head and cast into the sewers. "'You've got to shoot his
kind. They'd wreck things'" (74).128

Having seen man's guilt before himself (instead of
before God as Jeremiah did), Fred tries desperately to save
him. But his cries fall on deaf ears. Like the white men

in Native Son and The Outsider, these people are blind.

 

 

Not only don't they see blacks, they don't hear them. Fred

243

Daniels, man with no name, doesn!t exist for theme-nor
does Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man who remains entirely
nameless throughout his story.

Ely Houston predicts in The Outsider that Negroes

 

blessed (or cursed) with a double vision will become the
prophets of a new age. Edward Margolies has found the
same message in Wright:

.All of men's strivings, activities, and ideals are
simply a means of keeping from themselves the know-
ledge of their underground nature. . . . In reality
what Wright is doing is transferring what he once
regarded as a special Negro experience, a special
Negro truth in white America, to all men, white and
Negro, everywhere. If Negroes are more aware of
this truth, it is because their outsider-pariah status
has made it less easy for them to delude themselves.

Forced by their isolation to measure the white man's world
objectively, these judges in black skin will be the nemeses
of white society. Like the furies who haunted the con-
science of a blood-murderer, the black man of America will
goad his white brother into repentance. The first of
these new men, Fred Daniels, the man who lived underground,
fails. But others will follow who, seeing the truth, will
seek to warn man. And failing that, will seek to destroy
him.

In this story, Wright himself must be given credit
for prophesying certain aspects of the black power movement
of the sixties. For as early as 1944 he could see the

effect on a man's soul of a three hundred year old national

program of rejection and alienation. Having brought the

‘ . 1;;
LA

244

black man to America to be his slave, the white man could
not accept him as a brother once he had emancipated him.
Thus, although the black was free of his shackles, the
white ironically was not. *He was trapped by his own ime
perfect vision of life that had him master and the other

slave. What greater cruelty could man perpetrate against

.. .I-‘Si WW

his own kind than by refusing to admit an entire people's
existence? Driven to an underground mentality by this

relentless treatment, the blacks, as Wright envision them,

 

‘31-‘(7 ~ .

will find their own values existentially and rise up to

confront the whites with their truths.

A In” lvlull r»- {Iii
R? t“.

Chapter IV, Footnotes

1. Saunders Redding, "The Alien Land of Richard
wright," Soon, One Morning: New Writing by American
Negroes, 1940-1962, ed. by Herbert Hill (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf: 1963), p. 59. See also Reddings' comment in his
review of The Long Dream where he states in part that
"wright has been away too long. . . . Come back, Dick
Wright, to life again." '("The Way It Was," New York Times
Book Review Oct. 26, 1958 , p. 38).

 

 

 

2. Webb, Biography, p. 279.

 

3. That is, Wright as implied author does not
step into the narrative and comment directly, but he has
his characters do this for him--as he does in Max's speech
in Native Son. As Wayne Booth points out, this is not
bad a prioribut only in terms of whether it works in
context or not. I suggest it does not in this instance.
(See Chapter V for a more complete discussion of Wright's
rhetoric.)

 

4. See Chapter V, pp. 261—263.

5. Charles I. Glicksberg, "Existentialism in The
Outsider," Four Quarters, VII (Jan., 1958), 23.

 

6. R. W. B. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence,
Tragedy, and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 50, 51.

 

 

7. Richard Wright, The Outsider (New York: Harper
& Row, 1965), p. 86. (All subsequent page references to
this work will appear in parentheses in the text.)

 

8. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy,
and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, p. 55.

 

 

9. See Chapter II, pp. 25-26.

10. Hassan, Radical Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 33.

 

 

11. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy,
and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, p. 89.

 

 

245

mugs)...” mm vhilhpIJ
P .—
uu .4 _

246

12. Hassan, Radical Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, p. 39.

 

 

13. Lewis, The American Adam: Innocence, Tragedy,
and Tradition in the Nineteenth Century, p. 128.

 

l4. Darwin Turner, "The Outsider: Revision of an
Idea," CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 310-321.

 

 

15. Hassan, Radigal Innocence: The Contemporary
American Novel, pp. 26-27.

 

 

16. Ibid., p. 27.

 

 

17. Cf. Robert Penn Warren, All the Kin '8 Men (New
York: Bantam, 1970): (Jack Burden thinking)"Then I
thought how all knowledge that is worth anything is maybe 4
paid for by blood. Maybe that is the only way you can tell i
that a certain piece of knowledge is worth anything: it
has cost some blood" (p. 429).

John A. Williams, The Man Who Cried I Am (New York:
The New American Library, 1967): (Max Reddick thinking)
" He had come to know, reall know that to be oppressed
was not enough to win ultimately; that to be in the right
was not enough. You had to win the way they had won--
with blood" (p. 174).

 

 

18. Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea, trans. Lloyd Alexander
(New York: New Directions, 1964), p. 100.

19. Camus, Rebel, pp. 22, 297.
20. Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An

Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes
(New York: Washington Square Press, 1971), pp. ii, iii.

 

 

21. Turner, "The Outsider: Revision of an Idea,"
320-321.

 

22. See Chapter V, pp. 261-263.

23. Glicksberg, "Existentialism in The Outsider,"
23. See also Nick Aaron Ford, "The Ordeal of Richard
Wright," College English, XV (Oct., 1953): "the motivation
for the four murders committed by Cross is neither natural
nor compelling. It lies outside the normal pattern of
human psychology" (94).

 

 

24. Galloway, The Absurd Hero in American Fiction,
pp. XIX'XX.

 

247

25. Glicksberg, "Existentialism in The Outsider,"

 

17.

26. Richard Wright, "Big Boy Leaves Home," Uncle
Tom's Children, pp. l7-53.

27. Wright's "pastoral impulse" is evident here,
as it is in Black Boy and Lawd Today. See: Keneth
Kinnamon, "The Pastoral Impulse in Richard Wright,"
Midcontinent American Studies Journal, X (Spring, 1969),
41-47. ‘

 

 

28. Albert Camus, Caligula and Three Other Pla s,
trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Vintage Books, 1958),
p. vi.

29. See: James Baldwin, "Alas, Poor Richard,"
Nobody Knows My Name (New York: Dell, 1961), p. 151.

30. Kent, "Adventure of Western Culture," 324.

31. Baldwin, "Alas," Nobody Knows My Name: "In
most of the novels written by Negroes until today . . .
there is a great space where sex ought to be; and what
usually fills this space is violence. This violence, as
in so much of Wright's work, is gratuitous and compulsive
. . . because the root of the violence is never examined.
The root is . . . the rage, almost literally the howl of
a man who is being castrated" (p. 151).

32. "In his review of Native Son in March, 1940,
Malcolm Cowley, having in mind the consistency with which
Mr. Wright's executive design . . . had been a design of
violence, suggested that his 'sense of the indignities
heaped on his race' might well go so deep as to make it
his unconscious tendency in his fiction to revenge himself
'by a whole series of symbolic murders.' And though
Mr. Cowley may at this point have been somewhat overstating
things, the propensity for violence cannot, it is true, be
gainsaid: Mr. Wright may not have been bent on symbolic
murder, but at least it can be asserted that he was eager
to sound a hue and a cry and had something of a penchant
for 'holding a loaded pistol at the head of the white
world while he muttered between clenched teeth: "Either
you grant us equal rights as human beings or else this is
what will happen."'" (Nathan Scott, "The Dark and Haunted
Tower of Richard Wright," Graduate Comment, VII (July,
1964], 96. Quoted Charles I. Glicksberg, "Negro Fiction
in America," The South Atlantic Quarterly, 45 (October,
1946], 482.)

 

 

 

 

248

33. In 1959 Richard Lehan called it "the most
express treatment of the existential theme in American
fiction" (Lehan, "Existentialism in Recent American Fiction:
The Demonic Quest," p. 74).

34. Sartre, Age, p. 64.
35. Ibid., p. 38.

36. Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1967)} P. 36.

37. Kierkegaard's The Concept of Dread, trans.

Walter Lowrie (Princeton: Princeton UniVersity Press,
1944), p. 37.

38. Martin Heidegger, Bein and Time, trans.
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (London: SCM Press
LTD, 1962), pp. 179, 232, 233, 227.

39. See: Lewis Lawson, "Cross Damon: Kierkegaardian
Man of Dread," CLA Journal, XIV, 3 (March, 1971), 298-316.

 

40. Kierkegaard's The Concept of Dread, p. 38.
41. Ibid., p. 40.

42. Ibid., p. 55.

43. Sartre, Being, p. 68.

44. Ibid., pp. 71, 72.

45. Ibid., p. 186.

46. See also pp. 376, 406, 431.

47. Tillich, The Courage to Be, p. 35.

 

48. Ibid., p. 41.
49. Ibid., p. 56.
50. Ibid,, p. 56.
51. Ibid., p. 44.
52. Ibid., p. 47.

53. Ibid., pp. 49-50.

249

54. "Ibid., p. 52.

55. See Chapter III, pp. 112-115, 130, 152 for

similarities between Bigger and Camus' rebel.

56. Camus, Rebel, pp. 3, 4.
57. Ibid., p. 6.

58. Ibi§., p. 7.

59. Ibid., p. 10.

60. See Chapter III, p. 130.

61. Nathan Scott, "The Dark and Haunted Tower of

Richard wright," Graduate Comment, VII (July, 1964), 93.

trans.
1950),

 

62. Camus, Rebel, p. 20.

63. Ibid., p. 13.

64. Ibid., p. 15.

65. Fyoder Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov,

Constance Garnett (New York: The Modern Library,
p. 289.

 

66. Camus, Rebel, p. 25.
67. Ibid., p. 57.
68. Dostroyevsky, Brothers, p. 289.

69. Camus, Rebel, p. 59.

70. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans.

 

Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Random

House,

1967), pp. 10- -11, 13.
71. Camus, Rebel, p. 70.

72. Fyodor DostoerSky, The Possessed, trans.

 

Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York: Signet Classic, 1969),

p. 635.

73. Camus, Rebel, p. 71.
74. Ibid., p. 73.

75. Ibid., p. 74.

-- “‘1?

 

250

76. Ibid., pp. 101-102.
77. Ibid., p. 102.
78. Ibid., p. 102.

79. Sartre, "Existentialism is a Humanism," Exis-
tentalism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. by Kaufmann,
p. 295.

80. Tillich, The Courage to Be, pp. 141, 147-148.

 

81. Cf. Kirilov's ideas in The Possessed when he
declares that "'Man kept inventing Godiin order to live'"
(636), and with God dead, man will become a god.

 

82. See Chapter IV, pp. 208—209.

83. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 190.

 

84. Ibid., p. 192.
85. Ibid., p. 199.

86. Although there is little empirical evidence to
support this in The Outsider, it does seem to be the pattern
of Wright's other heroes as we have seen in The Long Dream
and Native Son.

 

 

 

87. Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle
Toward Self-Realization, p. 203. '

 

 

88. Ibid., p. 204.
89. Ibi§,, p. 204.
90. 1219:! pp. 204—205.
91. Ibid., p. 208.
92. £219., p. 211.
93. Ibid., p. 210.

94. Bone, Pamphlet, p. 39.

95. Gloria Bramwell, "Articulated Nightmare,"
Midstream, VII (Spring, 1961), 112.

 

96. Irving Howe, "Richard Wright: A Word of
Farewell," New Republic, CXLIV (Feb., 1961), 17.

 

251
97. Ronald Ridenour, "The Man Who Lived Underground,"
Phylon, XXXI (Spring, 1970), 54.
98. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 78.
99. Bone, Pamphlet, p. 26.
100. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 78.

101. Stanley Edgar Hyman, "Some Trends in the Novel,"
College English, XX (Oct., 1958), 6.

 

102. Ridenour, "The Man Who Lived Underground," S4.

103. Shirley Meyer, "The Identity of 'The Man Who
Lived Underground,'" Negro American Literature Forum, VI
(July, 1970), 52.

 

104. Gibson, "Tyranny of Convention," 352.
105. See Chapter V, pp. 268-270.

106. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 238. Native Son,
we discovered, fits into the fourth phase of this mythos.

 

107. Ibid., p. 154.

108. Ibid., "Any symbol at all takes its meaning
primarily from its context . . ." (p. 156).

109. Ibid., pp. 155, 156.

110. McCall, The EXample of Richard Wright: "It is
not entirely accurate to speak of the storyTs 'symbols.‘
We are forced to participate in the central character's
mind so utterly that the objects looming up before our
eyes rarely seem symbolic" (p. 170).

 

 

lll. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, p. 187.
112. Ibid., p. 238.
113. Ibid., p. 190.
114. 12193! p. 190.
115. Ibi§,, p. 191.
116. Ibid., p. 192.

117. Ibid., p. 193.

252

118. Thus we approach the story's Freudian content--
since it is being told in dream images. The manifest
content of these dreams is undesirable, but the latent
content reveals them to be disguised wish—fulfillment
dreams: Fred desperately wants to be able to communicate,
to end his isolation.

119. See Chapter IV, pp. 190-192.
120. Theodore Roethke, "The Waking," The Collected

Verse of Theodore Roethke: Words for the WindTBloomington:
Indiana University Press,il970), p. 124.

 

121. McCall, The Example of Richard Wright: "The
energy of the story so successfully fuses naturalistic
detail and Gothic allegory that it becomes almost
hallucinatory in its effect" (p. 170).

122. Richard Wright, "The Man Who Lived Underground,"
Eight Men (New York: Pyrmid Publications, Inc., 1961),
p. 23. (All subsequent page references to this work will
appear in parentheses in the text.)

 

123. Cf. Wright's statement in "The Literature of
the Negro in the United States": "These Negroes seemed
to have said to themselves: 'Well, if what is happening
to me is right then, dammit, anything is right'" (White Man,
Listen!, p. 90).

 

124. Dostoyevsky, Possessed, p. 633. Compare this
to what the officer in Kafka's "in the Penal Colony" states:
"'Guilt is never to be doubted'" (Selected Stories of
Franz Kafka, trans. Willa and Edwin Muir New York: The
Modern Library, 1952 , p. 97).

 

 

 

125. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 77.

 

126. Ibid., p. 78.

127. "The prophets that have been before me and
before thee of old prophesied both against many countries,
and against great kingdoms, of war, and of evil, and of

pestilence" (Jeremiah 28: 8). ". . . for spoiling and
violence are before me: and there are that raise up
strife and contention. Therefore the law is slacked,

and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth
compass about the righteous. . ." (Habbakuk l: 3,4).

128. The policemen's fear stems from two causes:
one, the seemingly irrational ravings of a man who would
ruin their system; and, two, the fact that Fred could

253

press charges against them for brutality and for forcing
him to sign a confession (they are so blind to Fred's
reality that they are unable to realize not only that
Fred wouldn't think of such an action but that (given the
idea) he wouldn't dare to carry it out).

129. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 79.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

One of the most difficult critical activities involved
in a study of Wright's fiction is to determine just where
Wright the man stood on the ethical questions his books
raise. Although it seems fairly clear that in general
terms Wright sympathized with all his characters to a greater
or lesser extent, it is also conceivable that he disapproved
of many of their individual deeds. Because he was writing
in protest of the American system and in support of her
victims, it is obvious that his heroes would have values
contrary to those of his audience. And what is so remarka-
ble about Wright's literary endeavors is that he was able
to create a sympathetic bond between his readers and men
who are liars, thieves, and killers. Seeing these men on
the streets or reading about them in terse newspaper
accounts, the reader would no doubt have serious reser-
vations about identifying with them; but yielding to the
skillful craft of an artist, the reader (to his own sur-
prise perhaps) can fully sympathize and empathize with
these disoriented men. A brief look at Wright's rhetoric,

therefore, should not only reveal how Wright allows readers

254

255

to identify with his anti-heroes, but it should also sug-
gest where Wright stands morally in regard to these men's
behavior.

All of Wright's major fictional works are written
from the same viewpoint. That is, Wright consistently
employs a dramatized narrator who is unaware that he is
telling the story and who acts as a narrator-agent rather
than a passive observer--he is, in fact, in each case the
novel's protagonist. Although this narrator is often
referred to in the third person, our knowledge of the
action and other characters is totally and consistently
confined to what this person knows, feels, intuits, or
sees. As narrator he has the option of showing us what
happens (scene) or telling us (summary or commentary).1

But standing behind this narrator and continually
manipulating him is what Wayne Booth calls the "implied
author"-—the "implied version of 'himself'" that a reader
must distinguish from the "real author":

Even the novel in which no narrator is dramatized

creates an implicit picture of an author who stands

behind the scenes. . . . This implied author is

always distinct from the 'real man'--whatever we

may take him to be--who creates a superior version

of himself, a 'second self' as he creates his work.
Thus it is possible--even probable--that the implied
authors of a single man's writings will all differ not only

from other authors' "implied authors" but from each other.

It is necessary therefore to determine two things: (1) how

256

the values (expressed or covert) of the implied author
affect our reaction to the book and, (2) how or even whether
the implied author reflects the values of his creator. It
seems rather dangerous to assume, for example, that Richard
Wright condoned the actions of either Bigger Thomas or
Cross Damon (or even Fish Tucker and his father) and yet
the implied authors of these novels certainly strive to
gain our sympathy for their heroes (narrators, centers of
consciousness). As Booth says,
it is clear that the picture the reader gets of this
presence is one of the author's most important effects.
However impersonal he may try to be, his reader will
inevitably construct a picture of the official scribe
who writes in this manner--and of course that official
scribe will never be neutral toward all values. Our
reactions to his various commitments, secret or avert,
Will help to determine our response to his work.
Because the implied author affects our response to
the work ("The 'implied author' chooses, consciously or
4 . . x
unconsciously, what we read . . . -" ) 1t 15 important to
discover his relationship to all parties concerned:
In any reading experience there is an implied dialogue
among author, narrator, the other characters, and the
reader. Each of the four can range, in relation to
each of the others, from identification to complete
opposition, on any axis of value, moral, intellectual,

aesthetic, and even physical.

In The Long Dream there is considerable intellectual

 

distance between the implied author and his narrator, the
narrator being the hero who at the beginning of the book is
a young child and at the end a high school dropout. Al—

though it is true that as Fish matures the intellectual

257

distance lessens, because he is so desperately uneducated,
the intellectual difference is generally maintained. One
result of this intellectual distance is an awareness on
Fish's part that does not ring true. Apparently Wright (as
implied author) was unwilling to intrude on his story with
direct commentary about the development of Fish's psyche;
instead he elected to give the illusion of letting the-
story tell itself. And-because he had limited himself to
the viewpoint of Fish, only Fish himself could reveal his
inner thoughts. But Fish is not always intellectually
capable of understanding the full implications of what he
experiences; he is certainly not able to articulate or
summarize the universality of his initiation--and yet he
is asked to. Therefore we have here a narrator who cannot
do more than have vague unexpressed intuitions about the
events of his life burdened with the responsibility of
reporting the special significance of these events to the
reader. The result, unfortunately, can be quite confusing
to the reader who is attempting to establish the nature

of this character's personality. On the one hand, we are
asked to believe that Fish is arrogant, ignorant, and
interested only in power, money, and sex-~willing to live
on the surface of things; on the other, we are shown that
he is introspective, sensitive, and conscious of his
maturation. While it is true that Fish is neurotic and

consequently daily confronted with the war between his

258

expansive and self-effacing selves, it is not true that

he is aware of this battle within. In fact, Fish suppresses

 

the conflict, preferring to believe that he is only his
expansive self, denying the self-effacing qualities that
conflict with his idealized image of himself as strong and

6 He tries to be hard,

powerful and the master of his fate.
tries to forget his weakness in the face of the white

world, tries not to realize what is happening to himself

as he slowly but inexorably turns into a second Tyree.
Therefore, because we cannot attribute much psychological
awareness to Fish, those scenes in which the implied author
tries to make us believe that Fish is pondering the meaning
of his life seem contrived to us. As a result, the implied
author interferes With our bond with Fish, whereas what
should or could be happening in these intimate scenes is

a reaffirmation of our sympathy for the narrator: as

Booth says, "the sustained inside View leads the reader

to hope for good fortune for the character with whom he
travels, quite independently of the qualities revealed."7
Because Fish is isolated and the story is told entirely
through his eyes (he has no companion--not even an intrusive
author), the reader for the most part does identify emo-
tionally with him; but in these scenes where Fish manifests
qualities we feel are nOt his own but the implied author's,

we lose our feeling of rapport and tend to look down on

Fish, lessening our pity for him;8 for example:

259

Fishbelly felt a creepy sensation grip his skull.
This was a ceremony. He did not think it; he felt
it, knew it. He was being baptized, initiated; he
was moving along the steep, dangerous precipice
leading from childhood to manhood(59).

As he knelt, the dog's dying associatively linked
itself with another vivid dying and another far-off
death: the lynched body of Chris that had lain that
awful night upon the wooden table in his father's
undertaking establishment. . . .

Then he bent forward an , befor he realized it, he
was acting out the role that Dr. Bruce had played
that night. . . .

'That's what they did to Chris,‘ he spoke aloud,
announcing an emotional discovery (123, 123, 124).

Although there is nothing inherently wrong with summarizing
statements such as those contained in the above passages,
somehow we just cannot attribute them to Fish.

A more controlled rendering of a black adolescent,

and thus a more successful novel, is Native Son. In this

 

book Wright uses the same technique as he does in The Long
Qgeem, a center of consciousness who is the hero and
through whose limited vision we receive the entire account
of the story. But here Wright more fully admits the limi-
tations of his narrator and does not try to imbue him with
intellectual powers of ratiocination he does not possess.
To compensate for Bigger's inability to assign meaning to
events, Wright employs two techniques: ironical juxta—
position (a technique, as we have seen, used frequently
by proletarian authors) and a long speech by another

9

(smarter) character intended to summarize one of the

book's themes. Although there is a vast intellectual

260

distance between the implied author and narrator--and even
an extreme moral distance--the emotional distance is so
minute as to be practically undetectable. Consequently,
the reader is continually encouraged to sympathize with
Bigger Thomas, even when he murders Mary and brutally
chops up her body. Wright is able to portray so convinc-
ingly the terror of Bigger's situation that the reader
sides emotionally with him, hoping against hope that he
won't get caught, for suddenly Bigger's getting caught
means the reader's arrest too:

Frenzy dominated him. . . . Frantically, he caught a

corner of the pillow and brought it to her lips. He
had to stop her from mumbling, or he would be caught.
He clenched his teeth and held his breath, intimidated
to the core by the awesome white blur floating toward
him.

The reality 0 the room fel from him; the vast city
of white peOple that sprawled outside took its place.
She was dead and he had killed her. He was a mur-
derer, a Negro murderer, a black murderer. He had
killed a white woman (84, 85, 85).
These flat, staccato phrases pile up in our minds the
horror of what it means to be black and guilty in a white
world--where to be black means to be guilty. Wright carries
his readers with him skillfully, even through the terrible
ordeal of burning her body:
Ought he to put her in head or feet first? Because
he was tired and scared, and because her feet were
nearer, he pushed her in, feet first. The heat blasted
his hands (90).

"Because he was tired and scared." This is no master

criminal; this is a confused, very unhappy boy who is

261

frightened to death, of what he has done and is doing. How
easy Wright makes it for us to sympathize with him:

He got his knife from his pocket and opened it and
stood by the furnace, looking at Mary's white throat.
Could he do it? He had to. Would there be blood?

Oh, Lord! He looked round with a haunted and pleading
look in his eyes. . . . He touched the sharp blade to
the throat, just touched it, as if expecting the knife
to cut the white flesh of itself, as if he did not
have to put pressure behind it. Wistfully, he gazed
at the edge of the blade resting on the white skin.
. . . Yes; he had to. Gently, he sawed the blade
into the flesh and struck a bone. He gritted his teeth
and cut harder (90).
Although intellectually and morally we think we ought to
be outraged at what Bigger is doing, we cannot help but
identify with his own dismay at what he must do. And amaz-
ingly enough we too feel that it must be done10 (much as
we hate to witness the gory deed).

Later, however, we recoil with Max when Bigger
jubilantly announces his satisfaction with being a murderer.
Although the implied author does not betray Bigger at this
crucial moment, it is just too much to expect the reader
to be entirely happy for Bigger. At the same time that
we are glad he feels whole, we are horrified at his solu-
tion. Here we reverse our distances: feeling intel-
lectually satisfied with Bigger's discovery but emotionally
repelled.

We are further emotionally antagonized by the

narrator in The Outsider. In this book, unlike the other

 

two, the implied author is very close to his narrator

intellectually (neither the implied author nor the narrator

262

seems to express Wright's philosophy, however). The
implied author also expects the reader to sympathize with
Cross, although he continually fails to give us any real
emotional reason for doing 30.. Unlike Bigger, who is
afraid and an unwilling murderer, Cross just seems to
enjoy the igee of being able to kill too much to allow us
to side with him. As a consequence, in one respect, the
book fails because the implied author fails to carry the
reader with him.
From the author's viewpoint, a successful reading of
his book must eliminate all distance between the
essential norms of his implied author and the norms
of the postulated reader. . . . A bad book, on the
other hand, is often most clearly recognizable
because the implied author asks that we judge ac-
cording to norms that we cannot accept.1
It isn't until the very end of the book that we begin to
identify with Cross through the efforts of the implied
author, for it is there that Cross realizes that a man
cannot expect to live at the expense of others. Although
there are a few isolated instances where the implied author
tries overtly to win our sympathy (for example, by having
Cross vow to dedicate his life to Eva), his hero is just
too hard to be embraced. ,A thoroughgoing nihilist for
most of the book, Cross seems insincere when he attempts
to live for love——especially because he and we know that
what Eva loves when she sees him is pure fabrication, a

falsehood he has created out of his need for her. She

does not love him; she loves what he has made her in her

263

innocence and trust see in him.. Therefore, instead of
helping us to sympathize with Cross, these avowed good
intentions toward Eva further alienate us from him. As
a result, we wish only that he would leave her alone.

At the same time the implied author is trying un-
successfully to win our emotional sympathy, he is showing
us that he himself isn't really committed morally to what
Cross does. Although Cross' intellectual arguments have
a certain logical appeal, they are based on a system of
amorality that even the implied author cannot accept. It
is almost as if he is experimenting with a philosophical
premise here--"what would happen if all men were nihilists
. . ."--and working it out to satisfy his own curiosity.
His hero is certainly his philosophical and intellectual
equal, but they are miles apart morally--and that is
precisely why we cannot identify with Cross.

Our relationship to the other characters in The
Outsider is also determined by the implied author's as
filtered through the eyes of his narrator. None of the
characters are truly admirable, but Cross and his implied
author do differ in their response to them. For example,
Cross is thoroughly disgusted by Bob Hunter (and his wife,
too, although not in exactly the same way). In Cross' eyes

their value as human beings had gone; if they existed,
all right; if they did not exist, that was all right
too. . . (171).

He wanted to rise and place his foot on Bob's neck
and cut off the flow of whining words.

264

weakness (220, 21).

He hated 36b f6: his
Although Cross despises Bob's craveness, the implied author
pleads for a little sympathy.12 Cross fails to realize
that Bob is fighting the only way he knows how against a
stronger foe. Even though Cross cannot accept Bob's
behavior, the reader can. And the reader accepts it
because the implied author presents Bob sympathetically,
as a mistreated earnest man, trying to help his race by
organizing unions--and trying to save himself from certain
death in the tropics (not unworthy objectives). Another
weak creature who cannot fight for her rights is Eva
Blount, with whom Cross falls in love instead of condemning
(one can forgive weakness in someone one must protect).
Except for Sarah, whose fight ends in her returning to
religion, the other characters are in the camp of the
arrogant and strong.13 Although Cross does not like any
of them, he admires their power and brains, feeling
intellectually akin to them. Moreover, because both the
D.A. and the communists would like nothing more than to
tame him, he is wary of them, enjoying what they stand
for--absolute power--just as long as they don't try to
curtail his freedom.

In contrast, the implied author does not admire
either the communists or the fascist, presenting them as

calculating, power-hungry demagogues; and because he never

presents the story from their viewpoint, he more or less

265

guarantees an emotional distance between them and the reader.
On the other hand, the implied author does seem to be at-
tracted to Ely Houston, the D.A.--we assume this is because
of a psychological kinship based on the fact that Houston
is a potential rebel who has managed to.keep his violence
in check. In conversation with Cross he sounds like a
sympathizer but when he sees Cross' nihilism in action he
is repelled. Ultimately, Houston is the only character
that the reader can respect (the reader pities Eva and Bob
and so has trouble identifying with or respecting them
since they are below him).

The implied authors of The Long Dream and Native Son

 

 

do not give their readers any great number of characters to
admire either. Although the implied author is sympathetic
to Tyree Tucker, drawing the reader into a grudging respect
for him, because the social and moral norms of Tyree do not
coincide with the reader's, it is difficult for the latter
to be wholly involved in Tyree's welfare (again the reader
feels superior). None of the whites receive or deserve
either the respect of the implied author or the reader.
Tyree's wife, Emma, is another weak character whom we

pity rather than sympathize with.

In Native Son heavy irony is used by the implied

 

author to separate the reader from the characters other
than the narrator. This is not the type of irony arising

in Huckleberry Finn, for example, where the reader knows

 

266

the innocent narrator is not evil ("'All right, then, I'll gg
to hell.'")l4--where the implied author and the reader are in
collusion, both knowing Huck's real worth even though Huck

himself is oblivious to it. Instead, Native Son's irony

 

emanates from the conversation and actions of the other char-
acters, related without comment by the narrator (like the

scenes in Huck Finn with the Duke and King)—-authorial silence

 

is maintained through juxtaposition. ‘Thus, a conflict appears
between a character's spoken intentions and the actual result
of his actions. For example/'Mr. Dalton regards himself as a
philanthropist, dedicated to the improvement of black youth;
but he owns the building that Bigger lives in and refuses to
rent to blacks outside the ghetto area. As another example,
his daughter, Mary, speaking of blacks, gushingly tells

Bigger that she would like to see how "they" live but is
incapable of being sensitive to the black man sitting beside
her.15 Thus the implied author disposes of the Daltons.

The communists are another matter. Although they are loyal
and sympathetic to Bigger they cannot really understand him
emotionally as a single individual, seeing him as a represent-
ative of his class and race. They have a certain intellectual
grasp of his situation but are really quite repelled when he

begins to accept himself as a killer (a far cry from the

hardened communists of The Outsider) because, we can safely

 

assume, in placing himself above the community, Bigger is

asserting his individuality to men who would have him submerge

267

it in the group. In Native Son, therefore, it is Max and Jan
who attract the reader the most after Bigger himself. But
because we are never given clues from inside these people
as to what their true motivation for helping Bigger is,
we hesitate to embrace them completely, preferring instead
to travel with the isolated narrator--just as we stick
with Fish for all his faults because we follow the story
completely through his eyes. To quote Booth:

Perhaps the most important effect of traveling with

a narrator who is unaccompanied by a helpful author

is that of decreasing emotional distance.

In reducing the emotional distance, the natural tend-

ency is to reduce--willy-nilly--moral and intellectual

distance as well.16

Wright successfully narrows the emotional distance between

narrator and reader in The Long Dream and Native Son but

 

fails to do so in The Outsider. As a result, we can identify
fairly well with Fish and Bigger but quite inadequately with
Cross.

Because the values of the implied author conflict

with those of his narrator in The Outsider we have trouble

 

locating the theme of the book--and the authorial silence
contributes to our confusion. Just where does Wright the
man stand? Although we cannot state for certain, his
implied author strongly suggests that the real author is
highly critical of Cross' philosophy and actions. But
because the effect of traveling with an otherwise unac-

companied narrator tends to lessen the emotional distance

268

between narrator and reader, we are torn in our response
to him.. We want to be able to identify with him, but we
absolutely cannot bring ourselves to since the implied*
author himself cannot identify with him.. Where Wright
himself stands remains an enigma unless we look outside
the book to his own life.

"The Man Who Lived.Underground" is told more suc-
cessfully from the viewpoint of its narrator-hero. Al-
though the intellectual distance between the implied author
and his narrator is extreme, there is a strong bond of
sympathetic understanding.between them, helpful in estab-
lishing a rapport between reader and narrator. On the
other hand, the story presents an interesting problem in
the area of the moral relationship between implied author
and narrator. Because it takes place outside the world
(although paradoxically literally inside it), life's normal
values are reversed. Therefore, the implied author presents
the reader with some ironic paradoxes, asking always that
we side with his hero. To wit: topside, Fred Daniels is
an innocent man framed.for.a murder by the police who are
desperate for a victim.. It is certainly not difficult for
the reader to realize that the implied author is sym-
pathetic to Fred in this situation; it is also, so far,
not difficult for the reader to be sympathetic to Fred.
Standard reactions to a standard situation are evoked:

it is eminently unfair to unjustly accuse and trap an

269

innocent man. The reader can easily identify with Fred's
feelings of bewilderment and fear (Wright very effectively
sets the tone in his opening scene).

But once Fred goes underground things change. The
surface morality no longer applies. Whereas Fred was
innocent and felt guilty on the streets, in the sewers he
is guilty of many little crimes but feels innocent since
he has come to the conclusion that all men are guilty by
virtue of being human. Because all men are guilty anyway,
it doesn't matter that another man is accused of a crime
that he, Fred Daniels, commits underground. And when he
sees an employee of the jewelry story pilfer from the safe,
Fred distinguishes between his theft and the man's. To
.him they are acts originating from two different value
systems. Thus the man is wrong because he intends to use
the money for what it was intended-~to buy things; the
man is working from the surface code of ethics that main-
tains it is wrong to steal because money has value. But
Fred is acting from the underground code that declares
money and jewels worthless; therefore, because he does not
take the money to spend it, because it is just so much
green paper according to his system, he is not a thief--
not guilty of stealing, just guilty of being a man. Fred
has reached the same conclusion that the heroes of

Dostoievski's The Possessed reach, that all men are guilty.

 

270

Whether or not the reader can accept this meta-
physical assertiOn of all men's inherent guilt and thus
Fred's innocence in stealing thousands of dollars in
diamonds and cash depends upon how he reacts to the atti-
tude of the implied author toward the hero and his values.

I believe that Wright successfully presents the surrealistic
world of the underground as the true condition of mankind.
And so I yield to his.skillful portrayal of Fred as inno-
cent of crime because life is a crime itself. If all men
are guilty, all men are also innocent. If God is dead,

says Ivan Karamazov, then everything is permitted; but if
everything is permitted, just as surely nothing is permitted,
according to Nietzsche. These moral entanglements intrigued
Wright who himself was a black living in a subculture
outside the mainstream of American life. Thus, as Tyree

Tucker points out in The Long Dream, the blacks are forced

 

to work from their own moral code that best suits their
chances for survival in a hostile environment. Moreover,

as Ely Houston observes in The Outsider, blacks have an

 

advantage in having the outsider's mentality since it gives
them a unique perspective on the world. Blacks are at

once inside and outside the world, living in its streets
and under them. They are the world's latest prophets.

They know the heart of darkness.

Although Lawd Today is told from the same viewpoint

 

as the other four works just discussed, its narrator-agent

271

is generally unreliable,17 and thus presents certain problems

not encountered in the other stories (with the possible

exception of The Outsider, which, as we have seen, presents

 

its own problem of locating the moral stance of the implied

author). Initially, therefore, we must establish why we

W

a» ‘1
_, ..
.‘““

consider the narrator faillable (i.e., how the implied author
lets us know we are dealing with a narrator whom we cannot
trust); then we can consider our own response as readers to

this situation. The distances which we will examine, there-

wfl 1.11.:- ..M._:' ‘ . W ..

fore, are primarily those between implied author and narrator
and between implied author and reader.

The most direct route to establishing the fact that
a narrator is unreliable, of course, would be for the
implied author to step in and tell us he is——or at least to
use other narrators whose different perspectives could
strongly suggest an element of faillability in the main
narrator. But Wright has chosen neither method. By his
complete reticence18 and by confining himself to Jake's
viewpoint he has forced us to look for other textual clues
to support our belief in his narrator's unreliability, such
as the implied author's choice of words, the actions he
chooses to relate, and his use of irony--this latter, the

clearest indication in Lawd Today of the narrator's

 

faillability.
Through the use of irony in selected passages,

Wright as implied author invites the reader to share

272

in his judgment of the narrator, Jake Jackson. As Booth

points out,
Whenever an author conveys to his reader an unspoken
point, he creates a sense of collusion against all
those, whether in the story or out of it, who do not
get that point. Irony is thus in part a device for
excluding as well as for including, and those who
are included, those who happen to have the necessary
information to grasp the irony, cannot but derive at
least part of their pleasure from a sense that others
are excluded. In the irony with which we are con-
cerned, the speaker is himself the butt of the ironic
point. The author and reader are secretly in collusion,
behind the speaker's back, agreeing upon the standard
by which he is found wanting.

Although it is true, as we shall see, that the implied

author is often sympathetic to Jake, he is more frequently

critical of him. Between the two exist extreme intellectual,

aesthetic, and moral distances...The emotional distance.

fluctuates from scene to scene, depending on the amount

of irony employed.

Wright's most telling disapproval appears in the
book's early scenes between Jake and his wife. Although
the implied author never directly tells us his attitudes,
we learn that, as far as he is concerned, Jake is: lazy,
selfish, spoiled, ill-tempered, mean, ignorant, and vain.
Annoyed with having his erotic dream interrupted and with
having to get up, Jake blames his wife for disturbing him:
"That bitch!" he says to himself, "How come she leave that
door open and wake me up?" (11). But mostly he vents his
anger over her innocent conversation with the milkman

(which takes on more ironical overtones when we see Jake

later partying in a whorehouse):

273

He heard Lil talking to somebody in the kitchen. He
bent lower, listening. What in hell can she find to
talk about all the time? I certainly would like to
know. And bawling her out don't seem to do a bit of
good, neither. Yeah, she's going to keep on with her
foolishness till I teach her a damn good lesson one
of these days. And furthermore, it ain't right for
a decent woman to stand talking common that way to
strangers. And she knows that! Jake . . . hurried
to the bathroom door, and listened with his ear to
the keyhole. Still talking! And laughing, too!
What to hell? What she think this is, a picnic?
(13, 14).

Jake proceeds to verbally abuse his wife, cowing
her with his violent shouting. Finally he beats her.

A hot sense of elation bubbled in him. He felt the
muscles of his back stiffening. Just a few more words
from her, just a few more, and, by God, he would slap
her into the middle of next Christmas. His right hand
itched. His voice dropped to a low growl.

She dodged but too late. Jake's Open pal caught
her square on her cheek, sounding like a pistol shot.
She spun around from the force of the blow, falling
weakly against the wall, screaming.

He kicked her in her side with his foot (21): . . . O .1
This last, simple declarative sentence speaks volumes.
The implied author has made no comment whatsoever
about either Jake's actions or his thoughts, but he has
pretty well established how he feels about Jake. He has
seemingly allowed the narrator to try to win the reader's
sympathy by letting him reveal his inner thoughts--and
Jake obviously thinks he's in the right. But these self-
righteous complaints serve only to alienate us from him.

And, as Booth has remarked of reading Jason's section of

The Sound and the Fury,

 

 

274

What all this amounts to is that on the moral
level we discover a kind of collaboration which can
be one of the most rewarding of all reading experi-
ences. To collaborate with the author by providing
the source of an allusion or by deciphering a pun is
one thing. But to collaborate with him by providing
mature floral judgment is a far more exhilerating '
sport.2

In reading these scenes in Lawd Today, there is something

 

especially gratifying in the fact that the author remains

Silent; to quote Booth again: "we find our ironic pleasure

heightened as we travel with less sympathetic protagonists

whose faults are never described directly."21
Although this dramatic irony permeates most of the

book, it is significantly absent throughout much of Part II,

"Squirrel Cage," in which we see Jake in relation to the

white power structure. In the scene where Jake is before

the postal Board of Review, Jake's character is still

unsavory: he lies outrageously and exudes self-pity; but

here the reader can sympathize with a man placed in the

untenable position of having his wife tattle on him to

his superiors--of having a wife who is in collusion with

the white paternalism that destroys his manhood. The

scene, pitiful as it is, however, is actually funny as

Jake attempts to con his white bosses when they accuse

him of beating his wife:

'She says you kicked her in her side with your
foot.‘

'Kicked her!‘ Jake stepped back with amazement.
'Kicked her? Do I look like a man what would kick
a sick woman?‘ (129).

275

Then to himself on the way out:
I'm going to break that bitch's neck if it's the last
thing I ever do! I'm going to stomp her guts out as
sure as my name's Jake Jackson. . . (132).

Later during the mail sorting the author gives us
other Opportunities to sympathize with Jake. We learn that
Jake's feelings were hurt when the black sitting on the
Review Board had called Jake a "Negro" in front of the
whites: "He could've called me colored at least" (142).
We also learn, partially anyway, why Jake is forced to act
so hard:

Anything which smacked of farms, chain gangs, lynch-
ings, hunger, or the South in general was repugnant
to him. These things had so hurt him once that he
wanted to forget them forever; to see them again
merely served to bring back the deep pain for which
he knew no salve (142).
Soon we again witness his helplessness towards whites
when he is disciplined for shirking his job: "If only
there was something he could do to pay the white folks
back for all they had ever done!" (148). Finally, we learn
that Jake and his buddies, much as they hated and feared
living in the South, are homesick for it: "there was
some good times in the South. . .'" (183).22

In the last section, :Rats' Alley," the implied
author gives the reader one more reason to grudgingly
admire his unreliable narrator: Jake's ability to have
a rousing good time. But, significantly, the author ends

Jake's story with another fight between him and his wife.

Our final judgment, then, must be that, though there are

276

valid reasons for Jake's behavior (his past, his emascué
lation, his frustrations), there is no real reason for us
to respect or identify with him. ‘We have occasionally
been able to sympathize with him, but the implied author
seems more concerned with our being repelled by him. His
intention seems to be to shock and horrify us, to egg us

on to protest the conditions he was protesting, those that

mgm‘u'f» -(1;i
. unifies?
. l

dehumanize an individual, that make him mean-spirited and

even dangerous. For Jake is no humble nigger--he is a

 

boiling potential murderer.
Another potential murderer who escaped the clutches
of the South is the author himself. His personal story

is told in his fictionalized autobiography,23 Black Boy,

 

whose implied author is totally identified with its narrator.
The book as an autobiography is told, predictably, through
a first person center of consciousness, the narrator-agent
being Wright himself as a child. Of interest here is the
relationship between the implied author and narrator, that
between the implied author and other characters, and that
between the narrator and other characters.

Although there is a great age difference between
the implied author and the narrator (the story begins when
Wright is 4 and ends when he is 17), there is total emotional
correspondence between the two. Where a touch of irony
might have shown the author a bit bemused by his own

stubborn self—righteousness, there is nothing but straight

277

sympathy. Everything,.it seems, was justified since it
led to wright's absolute rejection of his upbringing. As
implied author, Wright nods empatic approval of his young
narrator's recalcitant behavior.

FurthermOre, the moral distance is practically non-
existent; Wright the elder sympathizes completely with
Wright the child as he defends himself against his uncles,
aunts, and grandmother, and even as he steals. As he

recounts his stealing, it is obvious that he never identi-

thrm “‘n'-my

fied himself as a thief. It was simply something he had
to do to survive, and something he would never do again
once he esCaped the South. As he remembers,

If I stole, I would have a chance to head northward
quickly. . . .

He was white, and I could never do to him what he and
his kind had done to me. Therefore, I reasoned,
stealing was not a violation of my ethics, but of
his; I felt that things were rigged in his favor and
any action I took to circumvent his scheme of life
was justified. Yet I had not convinced myself.

I never stole again; and what kept me from it was

the knowledge that, for me, crime carried its own
punishment (222, 223, 227).

Throughout the book the implied author intrudes on
his narrator's story, mostly to comment on the impact his
environment has had on him. The most famous passage appears
parenthetically in Chapter II and brought much wrath upon
Wright from other blacks. Wright also comments bitterly

about the effect of religion on his family:

278

There were more violent quarrels in our deeply
religious home than in the home of a gangster, a
burglar, or a prostitute. . . . Wherever I found
religion in my life I found strife, the attempt of
one individual or group to rule another in the name
of God. The naked will to power seemed always to
walk in the wake of a hymn (150).

Most of the time, however, the implied author allows
the harshness of his hero's life to speak for itself through
stunning dialogue. For example, after Wright's dog (which
he couldn't bear to sell even though he was literally
starving) is crushed by a coal wagon, his mother's comment
is, "'You could have had a dollar. But you can't eat a
dead dog, can you?'" (81). Or the scene when Wright looks
for work:

'Now, boy, I want to ask you one question and I

want you to tell me the truth,‘ she said.

'Yes, ma'am,‘ I said, all attention.

'Do you steal?‘ she asked me seriously.

I burst into a laugh, then checked myself.

'What's so damn funny about that?‘ she asked.

'Lady, if I was a thief, I'd never tell anybody.‘

'What do you mean?‘ she blazed with a red face.

I had made a mistake during my first five minutes
in the white world (160).

Or his granny's response to Wright's publishing a story:
'Richard, what is this you're putting in the
papers?’ she asked. . . .
'It's just a story I made up,‘ I said.
'Then it's a lie,‘ she said.
'Oh, Christ,‘ I said.
'You must get out of this house if you take the
name of the Lord in vain,‘ she said (185).
The book is replete with such instances of cruelty and
callous indifference.

Because of the implied author's complete identifi-

cation with his narrator, there is less distance than

54-3.! I. 1’

.. 41“-”“27m!”
“71'1“” -; . . “W
Q. I

279

perhaps there should be for him to give.us'a more balanced
picture of his life. The young Wright always appears to
advantage, as Edward Margolies has noted:

Nowhere in the book are Wright's actions and thoughts
reprehensible. The characteristics he attributes to
himself are in marked contrast to those of other
characters in the book. He is 'realistic,‘ 'creative,‘
'passionate,‘ 'coura eous,‘ and maladjusted because he
refuses to conform.2

Every misdeed of the young Wright is either rationalized
or justified by the implied author.

By supporting the actions of his narrator at all
times, the implied author is asking the reader to join them
in their condemnation of the other characters in the story.
The whites emerge as little less than monsters, although
a few make feeble attempts to help Wright--some out of
sincere motives, some out of guilt—-but these.men either
cannot fight the solid Southern bigotry or they bungle
their overtures to Wright by unwittingly shaming or scaring.
him (see pages 252-255, for example). The blacks fare no
better at the hand of the implied author; both he and his
narrator despise most of the other blabks, not only because
they allow themselves to be victimized but also because
they attempt to make Wright one of them. Wright the man,
the implied author, and the narrator, balks at this,
refusing to have a fixed personality. He goes north to

discover himself:

As I had lived in the South I had not had the chance
to learn who I was. The pressure of Southern living

6F

1.1: muanY‘x' 3‘.

280

kept me from being the kind of person that I might
have been. I had been what my surroundings had demanded,
what my family--confirming to the dictates of the whites
above them--had exacted of me, and what the whites had
said that I must be (284).
And yet, as he leaves, he realizes that he takes the South
with him. He might have despised the Uncle Toms, but in
his heart he cannot reject them. He must speak out for
them.
It is fairly obvious that Wright intended to present

the bleakest possible picture of the South in Black Boy,

 

. .‘fi‘v-W .‘ -.. fi"!

since he selectively left out details of his life that
would show his basically middle class background.25 He
wished to identify himself with the poor blacks, to function
as a symbol of their lives--only because he rebelled could
he escape the strictures of the South. The book, therefore,
protests both against bigotry and against men who accept its
teachings--black and white. It is also, like Wright's
fiction, the story of a black man who must fight--and

fight hard--to discover who he is.

Reading Richard Wright then is an adventure in black
perspectives. Although the white reader might predict that
he was going to have certain difficulty in accepting some
of the actions of Wright's black heroes because their social
mores differ, Wright has been able to create sympathetic
characters so well that there is virtually no emotional
distance between the reader and Fishbelly, Bigger, Fred

Daniels, and the young Wright himself. There is, however,

281

as I have pointed out, a problem with Cross Damon because
of the attitude of the implied author; and there is, of
course, a problem with Jake Jackson for the same reason.
But in the other stories no real problem exists because
of a constant rapport between implied author and narrator-

hero. Therefore, the reader travels willingly with these

. vi: »‘I..
.(

sad, troubled men, accepting the norms postulated by the
implied author.

It is evident by now that one of the outstanding

“ l
I

characteristics of Wright's fiction is the ease with which
the reader can identify with his anti-heroes. Wright has
been able to establish this relationship primarily through
a controlled point of view whereby the reader is privy
only to the thoughts and experiences of his narrator. As
a consequence, although many secondary characters are
developed incompletely, each major hero emerges as a fully
conceived personality: each man's motivations are explored
and his background sketched in. Each book, therefore,

can stand on its own merits and reward the textual critic,
who, as he studies Wright, discovers his extraordinary
originality within traditional literary forms. He finds,
for example, an autobiography that is constructed as a

26 He finds a novel, that the reviewers

piece of fiction.
have condemned outright, to be, in fact, a skillful
symbiosis of form and contente-where the plot (ritual)

amplifies the thought (dream). He finds a naturalistic

282

novel with an existential ending. And, most surprisingly,
he finds outcasts and criminals with whom he willingly
sympathizes.

But having looked in detail at the heroes in Wright's
major fiction, it is also clear from such a study that an

heroic model emerges-~that, although the books can un-

W

questionably be read as separate entities, they can also 51
be read as parts of a whole. Therefore, instead of nar-

rowing in on a particular book's individual hero, we can,

 

by reversing the process, expand our perspective and i
discover a sort of mega-hero, a paradigm of all Wright's
heroes. This archetypal figure is best described as
Hassan's rebel-victim, the innocent whose radical vision
forces him to reject his slavery. Marked from birth as

an outcast, this anti-hero continues to be alienated from
society until he dies; if he is stubborn he can create

his own identity‘by refusing first of all to accept the
one society brands him with and then by actively seeking
experiences that will help form his character. In his
stories, Wright not only chose the Negro to be emblematic
of all Oppressed peoples but also to be the metaphor for
modern man. Isolated, alienated, and haunted by a sense
of dread, modern man and the black man have much in common.

In Black Boy and The Long Dream Wright suggests the

 

 

causes for the black man's alienation. Victims of a national

program of racial oppression, the youths in these two books

283

learn early the fear and danger of being black in America.
Treated as less than human by the whites, taught to conceal
their true feelings and deny their positive feelings,
Wright the persona and Fish soon lose their sense of self-
respect. Alienated from their real selves, they beCome

bitter, frightened men. The outcome of their initiation

. Juana

is truly victimization and renunciation. Instead of being
welcomed into society, they are turned away. Ordinary men,
even at times pitiful, they fail to attain tragic stature.

Thus their story is tragic irony. They are the archetypal

Wo‘m I. I! arm-Lha- Im‘f. -f:l’<’
t‘ . . .
h

scapegoats who are punished for no justifiable reason--who
are innocent victims of a guilty society.
The consequences of such treatment are discoverable

in Lawd Today and Native Son. In both of these books the

 

 

hero has reached maturity through the same violent initi-
ation rituals that we witnessed in the two preceding
works. Rather than concentrating on the process of victim—

ization as he did in Black Boy and The Long Dream, however,

 

 

Wright explores the effects of victimization. Lawd Today

 

illustrates the plight of the oppressed black worker. A
slave to white capitalism, Jake Jackson is a disgruntled,
unsavory character who is incapable of improving his situ-
ation. He is under the thumb of the U.S. Government and
controlled by his environment. Bigger Thomas, coming from
the same background as the other three heroes, is initially

a victim also. But he, like the metaphysical rebels before

284

him, refuses to participate in his own bondage. ‘Using an
accidental murder to free himself, this hero makes the
existential decision to accept himself for what he is. The
victim has finally rebelled.

The continuation of the metaphysical rebellion occurs
.in The Outsider. Here, the black victim begins to blend E?
into a more obvious identification with all men. An out-

sider by virtue of his.race,.like the other heroes, Cross 5

 

Damon is also an outsider by choicev-by.virtue of being a E'
man. Convinced that all men are totally free, that God is
dead and that everything is permitted, Cross is the exis-
tential hero par excellence. A nihilist, he hungrily
explores the farthest edges of freedom, in the process
breaking all bonds with humanity, forgetting his responsi-
bility to others, murdering wantonly--in short, regarding
himself as above the laws of men and thus a god in his own
right. As he dies, Cross recognizes the existential truth
that men, having no god, must stick together.

The rebel-victim has come full circle. He is now
Fred Daniels. He is Everyman who learns, by living in the
sewers of a large city (the symbol of the fallen world),
that all men are alike, that all men are guilty. And the
world has no meaning. Man must therefore not only invent
his own meaning but must also be responsible for his own
actions and for other people.. The black rebel-victim has

become symbolic of all men and his vision prophetic.

285

In summary, although Wright sympathized with the
blacks he created, he did not necessarily condone their
behavior. "Understood" would be a better word. A victim
himself of prejudice and coercion, he felt a strong bond
with these dispossessed men he created. As a result, all

his life, in and outside of his fiction, Richard Wright

..

struggled to improve the blackman's condition by protesting

against the dreadful injustices he witnessed and experienced.

., ‘1. ’5. “AIDA“? .nm‘. ‘2 19:1"!

For he felt that the community of man could only be strength—

/)
ened by admitting all men as equals into itfi' Moreover,

 

because he was attempting to present a realistic picture

of the depths of despair and degeneracy so prevalent in
black lives, he was forced to attribute certain undesirable
characteristics to his heroes. Therefore, although he
could not help but disapprove of their violent crimes,

he recognized the need to have his heroes reveal their
desperation through asocial means in order to shock society
into an awareness of what it had done. His autobiography
and last novel present the disgraceful initiation of black
youth, his other fiction reveals the extremes to which the
disinherited can go to claim their rights as men. Wright
knew how close he had come to being a Bigger Thomas to ever
let society forget it. The final impression of his hero
that one takes from reading his fiction, therefore, is

that of a man beaten to the ground but determined to rise

from his subjugation to join his fellow men in perhaps a

286

god-less world, but one where mutual respect gives life

some dignity.

: :21 gr
_ J

_ 7977’

mun—paw .. 1.11.5.5“;va

Chapter V, Footnotes

1. Although some critics would disagree, there seems
to be no valid reason for automatically condemning the
technique of summary; instead it seems much more reasonable
(and critically sound) to judge an individual scene on its
own merits, deciding on the basis of intention and success
whether or not telling was the better technique to use
(see Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1967 fOr'a strong argument
supporting this position).

2. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 1967), p. 151.

 

3. Ibid., p. 71.
4. Ibid., p. 74.
5. Ibid., p. 155.

6. See Horney, p. 192, for a discussion of this trend
in neurotics. Also, see Chapter II, pp. 48-51-

7. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 246.

 

8. See Booth, p. 277.

9. Not a particularly effective technique in this
instance since the story itself has been powerful enough
to establish the theme without contrived assistance.

10. See Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 249,
where he discusses the effects of maintaining a single
inside View using Austen's Emma as his example. See also
‘Walcutt, American Literary Naturalism: A Divided Stream,
p. 22, for a discussion of the fact that the goriest
scenes in naturalistic fiction are usually the most under-
stated.

 

11. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 157.

 

12. As I have pointed out (Chapter IV, p. 226), it
is conceivable that Cross is actively externalizing his
self-hate when he scorns Bob's behavior, since, according
to Karen Horney, the neurotic "hates and despises in

287

 

288

others all he suppresses and hates in himself. . ." (p. 208).
Bob's desire to please conflicts with Cross' idealized image
of himself as emotionally uninvolved and in command of his
life.

13. Even Cross' wife and mistress have a certain
strength that allows them to control Cross early in the
book . a»

14. Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,
ed. by Henry Nash Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.,
Riverside Edition, 1958), P. 180.

 

15. See Chapter III, pp. 105-106.

16. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, pp. 274, 249.

 

17. I accept Wayne Booth's definition of "unreliable
narrator": "For lack of better terms, I have called a
narrator reliable when he speaks for or acts in accordance
with the norms of the work (which is to say, the implied
author's norms), unreliable when he does not" (Ibid.,
pp. 158-159).

 

18. Except for the two instances already mentioned
in Chapter III, occurring on pages 48 and 133 of the novel,
which are strictly informational--not involved with character
development or theme at all.

19. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, p. 304.

 

20. Ibid., p. 307.
21. Ibid., p. 306.

22. See Kinnamon, "Pastoral Impulse," Midcontinent
Am. Stds. Journal, 41-47. See also William Attaway's novel
of black migrants, Blood on the Forge: "We have been
tricked away from our poor, good-as-bad-ground-and-bad—
white-men-will—let-'em-be hills. What men in their right
minds would leave off tending green growing things to tend
iron monsters?" ( New York: Collier Books, 1970 , p. 44;
See also pp. 43, 45, 46, 170 eg passim).

 

 

 

23. See Webb, Biography, p. 205 et passim; and
Brignano, pp. 4-7, where he calls it "ostensibly an auto-
biography" (p. 4), saying that "the story of one Negro
and his family is projected into a tale of all Negroes of
the South: (p. 6).

 

24. Margolies, Art of Richard Wright, p. 19.

 

289

25. See Webb, Biography, pp. 205ff.

 

26. See: John M. Reilly, "Self-Portraits by Richard
Wright," The Colorado Quarterly, XX (Summer, 1971), 31-45:
"It is easy to receive Black Boy as fiction rather than
autobiography, since, apart from chronology, it does not
possess the conventional autobiographical form. There is
no neat summary of forebears and no continuous narrator.
Objective details are hard to order as one reads" (33).

 

F

.“;!

i
i
i;

 

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

290

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Tillich, Paul. The Courage To Be. New Haven: Yale
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_.'_-x_. f! ,3.’

Tischler, Nancy M. Black Masks: Negro Characters in
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Trimmer, Joseph F. Black American Literature: Notes
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Twain, Mark. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Edited by
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Walcutt, Charles Child. American Literary Naturalism:
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Waldmeir, Joseph J., ed. Recent American Fiction: Some
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Warren, Robert Penn. All the King's Men. New York:
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Webb, Constance. Richard Wright: A Biography. New York:
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Weitz, Morris. A Philosophy of the Arts. Cambridge, Mass.:
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Wheelis, Allen. The Quest for Identity. New York: W. W.
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Williams, John.A- The Man Who Cried I.Am, New York:
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. The Most Native of Sons: A Biography of Richard
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. Sissie. Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books,
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.l 2,4"

Articles, Poems, Reviews

Aaron, Daniel. "Richard Wright and the Communist Party."
New Letters (Special Issue on Richard Wright),
XXXVIII (Winter, 1971), 170-181.

Adams, Phoebe. "The Wrong Road." Rev. of The Outsider,
Atlantic Monthly, CLXLI (May, 1953), 77-78.

 

thfltat mrmxn {a}!

 

Alexander, Margaret Walker. "Richard Wright." New Letters
(Special Issue on Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter,
1971), 182-202.

 

Algren, Nelson. "Remembering Richard Wright." Nation,
CXCII (January 28, 1961), 85.

Arden, Eugene. "The Early Harlem Novel." Phylon, XX

Bakish, David. "Underground in an Ambiguous Dreamworld."

 

Studies in Black Literature, II, 3 (Autumn, 1971),
18-23o
Baldwin, James. "Ce qui Survivra de Richard Wright."

Preuves, no. 146 (April, 1963), 76-79.

. "Everybody's Protest Novel." Zero (France),

. "Richard Wright." Encounter, XVI, 4 (April,

 

. "Richard Wright tel que je l'ai connu."
Prevues, no. 120 (February, 1961), 42-45.

. "The Survival of Richard Wright." Reporter,
XXIV (March 16, 1961), 52—55. '

Barksdale, RiChard K. "Alienation'and the Anti-Hero in'
Recent American Fiction." CLA Journal, X, l '
(Sept., 1966), 1-10.

 

301

Bayliss, John F. "Native Son: Protest or Psychological
Study?" Negro American Literature Forum, I, 1 (Fall,
1967), n.p.

 

 

Beja, Morris. "It Must Be Important: Negroes in Contempo-
rary American Fiction." Antioch Review, XXIV (Fall,
1964), 323-336.

 

Bosschére, Guy de. "Fishbelly de Richard Wright." Syntheses,
no. 174 (November, 1960), 63-66.

 

 

I7 ‘fi
' “:3

Bramwell, Gloria. "Articulated Nightmare." Midstream, VII
(Spring, 1961), 110-112. .

 

Brignano, Russell C. "Richard Wright: A Bibliography of
Secondary Sources." Studies in Black Literature,

 

 

Britt, David. "Native Son: Watershed of Negro Protest i
Literature." Negro American Literature Forum, I,

 

1 (Fall, 1967), n.p.

Bryer, Jackson. "Richard Wright: A Selected Check List
of Criticism." Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary
Literature, 1 (Fall, 1960), 22—33.

 

 

Burgum, Edwin Berry. "The Art of Richard Wright's Short
Stories." Quarterly Review of Literature, I (Spring,
1944), 198-211.

 

. "The Promise of Democracy in the Fiction of
Richard Wright." Science and Society, VII (September,
1943), 338-353.

 

Burns, Ben. "Return of the Native Son." Ebony, VII
(Dec., 1951), 100.

. "They're Not Uncle Tom's Children." Reporter,
XIV (March 8, 1956), 21-23.

 

Charney, Maurice. "James Baldwin's Quarrel with Richard
Wright." American Quarterly, XV (Spring, 1963),
65-75.

Clark, Edward. "Images of the Negro in the American Novel."

Jahrbuch ffir Amerikastudien, V (1960), 175-184.

 

Clayton, Horace. "Frightened Children of Frightened
Parents." Twice a Year, XII-XIII (Spring-Summer,
Fall-Winter, 1945), 262-269.

 

302

Cohn, David L. "The Negro Novel: Richard Wright."
Atlantic Monthly, CLXV (May, 1940), 659-661.

Creekmore, Hubert. "Social Factors in Native Son."
University of Kansas City Review, VII (1941), 136-
143.

 

Cripps, Thomas. "Native Son in the Movies." New Letters
(Special Issue on RiEhard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter,
1971), 49-63.

 

 

Davis, Arthur P. "The Outsider' as a Novel of Race."
Midwest Journal, VII (Winter, 1955-1956), 320-326.

Dean, Dwight G. "Alienation: Its Meaning and Measurement."
American Sociological Review, XXVI, 5 (Oct., 1961),
753-8 0

Dickstein, Morris. "Wright, Baldwin, Cleaver." New Letters
(Special Issue on Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter,
1971), 117-124.

Ellison, Ralph and James Alan McPherson. "Indivisible
Man." The Atlantic, CCXXVI, 6 (December, 1970),
45-60.

 

Ellison, Ralph. "Richard Wright's Blues." Antioch Review,

 

Emanuel, James A. "Lines for Richard Wright." poem,
Studies on Black Literature, I, 3 (Autumn, 1970), 2.

 

Fabre, Michel. "An Interview with Simone DeBeauvoir."
Studies in Black Literature (Special Issue on
Richard Wright), I, 3 (Autumn, 1970), 3-5.

 

. "The Poetry of Richard Wright." Studies in
Black Literature (Special Issue on Richard Wright),
I, 3 (Autumn, 1970), 10-22.

 

. "Wright's Exile." New Letters (Special Issue on
Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter, 1971), 136-154.

 

Fabre, Michel, and Edward Margolies. "A Bibliography 0f
Richard Wright's Works." New Letters (Special Issue
on Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter, 1971), 155-169.

 

, and . "Richard Wright (1908-1960): A
Bibliography." Bulletin of Bibliography, XXIV
(January-April, 1965), 131—133, 137.

 

I“- 1”

‘mT 7'!

“Me ”'I Z.

303

Ford, J. W. "The Case of Richard Wright." Daily Worker,
XXI (September 5, 1944), 6.

 

Ford, Nick A. "Battle of the Books: A Critical Survey of
Significant Books by and About Negroes Published in
1960." Phylon, XXII (Summer, 1961), 119-134.

. "Four Popular Negro Novelists." Phylon, XV
(lst Quarter, 1954), 29-39.

. "The Ordeal of Richard Wright." College English,
XV (October, 1953), 87-94.

El

 

. "Rev. of Lawd Today, by Richard wright." CLA
Journal, VII (March, 1964), 269-270.

 

. "Richard Wright: A Profile." Chicago Jewish

 

my“: “9A:l_l—Lm\h . . m P
.‘

Fuller, Hoyt. "On the Death of Richard Wright." Southwest
Review, XLVI (Autumn, 1961), vi-vii, 334-337.

 

Fuller, H. W. "Contemporary Negro Fiction." Southwest
Review, L (Autumn, 1965), 321-335.

 

Galen Last, Henk van. "Richard Wright." Vri' Nederland
(Netherlands), No. 22 (January 25, 19 7), 16.

 

Gérard, Albert. "Négritude et humanité chez Richard
Wright." La Revue Nouvelle, XXX (October 15, 1960),
337-343.

 

. "Vie et vocation de Richard Wright." Revue
Gérérale Belge, XCVIII (No. 1, 1961), 65-78.

 

Gibson, Donald B. "Richard Wright: A Bibliographical
Essay." CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 360-365.

 

. "Richard Wright and the Tyranny of Convention."
CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 344-357.

 

"Wright's Invisible Native Son." American
Quarterly, XXI (Winter, 1969), 728-738.

 

Glicksberg, Charles I. "The Alienation of Negro Literature."
Phylon, XI (lst Quarter, 1950), 49-58.

. "Existentialism in The Outsider." Four Quarters,
VII (January, 1958), 17-26.

 

304

Glicksberg, Charles I. "The Furies in Negro Fiction."
Western Review, XIII (Winter, 1949), 107-114.

. "The God of Fiction." Colorado Quarterly,

 

 

. "Negro Fiction in American." geuth Atlantic
Quarterly, XLV (October, 1946), 477-488..

 

 

 

Grana, Gianni. "Oltre L'Estetica della Violenza." LaFiera
Létteraria (Italy), X (October 30, 1955), 4.

 

Green, Gerald. "Black to Bigger." Kenyon Review, XXVIII
(September, 1966), 521-539.

 

Harper, Michael S. "Poems for Richard Wright: A Sequence."
New Letters (Special Issue on Richard Wright),

XXXVIII (Winter, 1971), 83-87.

 

Harrington, Ollie. "The Last Days of Richard Wright."
Ebony, XVII (February, 1961), 83-86, 88, 90, 92-94.

Hermans, W. F. "Korte bes Prekingen." Litterair Paspoort
(Netherlands), No. 11 (September, 1947), 12-13.

 

Hicks, Granville. "The Power of Richard Wright." rev.
of The Long Dream by Richard Wright, Saturday Review,
XLIiTOct. 18, 1958), 13, 65.

 

 

Hill, Herbert. "Uncle Tom, An Enduring American Myth."
The Crisis, LXXII, 5 (May, 1965), 289-295, 325.

 

Houseman, John. "Native Son on Stage." New Letters
(Special Issue on Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter,
1971), 71-82.

 

Howe, Irving. "Black Boys and Native Sons." Dissent, X
(Autumn, 1963), 353-368.

. "Richard Wright: A Word of Farewell." New
Republic, CXLIV (February 13, 1961), 17-18.

 

Hughes, Langston. "Richard Wright's Last Guest at Home."
Ebony, XVII (February, 1961), 94.

Hyman, Stanley Edgar. '"Some Trends in the Novel." :College
English, XX (October, 1958), 1-9.

Isaacs, Harold R. "Five Writers and Their Ancestors."
Phylon, XXI (Fall, 1960, Winter, 1960), 243-265,
317-336.

305

Jackson, Blyden. "The Negro's Image of the Universe as
Reflected in His Fiction." CLA Journal, IV (Sept.,
1960), 22-31.

 

. "The Negro's Negro in Negro Literature."
Michigan Quarterly Review, IV (Fall, 1965), 290-295.

 

 

. "Richard Wright: Black Boy from America's
Black Belt and Urban Ghetto." CLA Journal, XII

 

 

. "Richard Wright in a Moment of Truth." Southern
Literary Journal, III (Spring, 1971), 3-17.

 

 

Jackson, Esther Merle. "The American Negro and the Image
of the Absurd." Phylon, XXIII (1962), 359-71.

James, Charles L. "Bigger Thomas in the Seventies: A
Twentieth-Century Search for Significance." English
Record, XXII (Fall, 1971), 6-14.

Jarrett, Thomas D. "Recent Fiction by Negroes." College
English, XVI (November, 1954), 85-91.

Kaempffert, Waldemar. "Science in Review--An Author's Mind
Plumbed for the Unconscious Factor in the Creation
of a Novel." New York Times, September 24, 1944,
Sec. IV, p. ll.‘

 

 

 

Kearns, Edward. "The 'Fate' Section of Native Son."
Contemporary Literature, XII, 2 (Spring, 1971),
146-155.

Keniston, Kenneth. "Alienation and the Decline of Utopia."
American Scholar, XXXIX (1960), 161-200.

 

Kennedy, James G. "The Content and Form of Native Son."
College English, XXXIV, 2 (Nov., 1972), 269-288.
Followed by Comment by Annette Conn, pp. 284-286.

 

Kent, George E. "On the Future Study of Richard Wright."
CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 366-370.

 

. "Richard Wright: Blackness and the Adventure
of Western Culture." CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969),
322-343.

 

 

Kim, Jean-Jacques. "La Culpabilité Multiple des Noirs
Americains." Critique (France), XIII (January,
1957), 80-88.

 

306

Kinnamon, Keneth. "Lawd Toda : Richard Wright's Apprentice
Novel." Studies in BIack Literature, II, 2 (Summer,

 

"Native Son: The Personal, Social, and Political
Background." Phylon, XXX (Spring, 1969), 66-72.

. "The Pastoral Impulse in Richard Wright." Mid-
continent American Studies Journal, X (Spring,

. "Richard Wright's Use of 'Othello' in Native
Son." CLA Journal, XII (June, 1969), 358-359.

 

Klotman, Phyllis R., and Melville Yancy. "Gift of Double
Vision: Possible Political Implications of Richard
Wright's 'Self-Consciousness' Thesis." CLA Journal,
XVI, 1 (Sept., 1972), 106-116.

 

Knox, George. "The Negro Novelist's Sensibility and the
Outsider Theme." Western Humanities Review, XI
(Spring, 1957), 137-148.

 

Kostelanetz, Richard. "The Politics of Unresolved Quests
in the Novels of Richard Wright." Xavier University
Studies, VIII (May, 1969), 31-63.

 

Las Vergas, Raymond. "Richard Wright." Revue de Paris
(France), No. 65 (August, 1958), 121-131.

 

Lawson, Lewis. "Cross Damon: Kierkegaardian Man of
Dread." CLA Journal, XIV, 3 (March, 1971), 298-316.

 

Leary, Lewis. "Lawd Todey: Notes on Richard Wright's
First/Last Novel.‘ CLA Journal, XV, 4 (June, 1972),

 

 

411-420.
Lehan, Richard. "Existentialism in Recent American Fiction:
the Demonic Quest." Texas Studies in Literature

 

and Language, 1 (Summer, 1959), 181-202.

 

 

Lemaire, Marcel. "Fiction in the USA From the South. . ."
Revue de Langues Vivantes, XXVII (No. 3, 1961),

"Letters to Richard Wright." New Letters (Special Issue
on Richard Wright), XXXVIII (Winter, 1971), 128-135.

 

Lewis, Theophilus. "The Saga of Bigger Thomas." Catholic
World, CLIII (May, 1941), 201-206.

307

Marcus, Steven. "The American Negro in Search of Identity."
Commentary, XVI (November, 1953), 456-463.

Maund, Alfred. "The Negro Novelist and the Contemporary
Scene." Chicago Jewish Forum, XIII (Fall, 1954),
28-340

Meyer, Shirley. "The Identity of 'The Man Who Lived
Underground.'" Negro American Literature Forum,

Miller, Eugene E. Miller. "Voodoo Parallels in Native Son."
CLA Journal, XVI, 1 (September, 1972), 81-95.

 

"'Native Son' Filmed in Argentina." Ebony, VI (January,
1951), 82-86.

Padmore, Dorothy. "A Letter from Dorothy Padmore." Studies
in Black Literature (Special Issue on Richard Wright),
I, 3 (Autumn, 1970i, 5- 9.

 

Radine, Serge. "Ecrivains Américains Non-Conformists."
Suisse Contemporaine (Switzerland), IX (June, 1949),
287-295.

Rascoe, Burton. "Negro Novel and White Reviewers."

American Mercury, L (May, 1940), 113-117.

Record, C. Wilson. "The Negro as Creative Artist." Crisis,
LXXII (March, 1965), 153-158.

Redding, J. Saunders. "American Negro'Literature." American
Scholar, XVIII (Spring, 1949), 137-148.

. "The Problems of the Negro Writer." Massachusetts
Review, VI (Winter, 1965), 57—70.

 

. "Richard Wright's Posthumous Stories." rev. of
Eight Men, by Richard Wright, New York Herald
Tribune Book Review, January 22, 1961, p. 33.

 

 

 

. "The Way It Was." rev. of The Long Dream, by
Richard Wright, New York Times Book ReView, October 26,
1958, p. 4, 38.

 

 

Reilly, John M. "Lawd Today: Richard Wright's Experiment
in Naturalism." Studies in Black Literature, II,
3 (Autumn, 1971), 14-17.

 

 

"Self-Portraits by Richard Wright." Colorado
Quarterly, XX (Summer, 1971), 31-45.

 

 

308

Ridenour, Ronald. "'The Man Who Lived Underground': A
Critique." Phylon, XXXI, 1 (Spring, 1970), 54-57.

Riesman, David. "Marginality, Conformity, and Insight."
Phylon, XIV (September, 1953), 245-253.

Rogge, Heinz. "Die Amerikanische Negerfrage in Lichte der
Literatur von Richard Wright und Ralph Ellison."
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56-69 0

. "Die Amerikanische Negerfrage in Lichte der
Literatur von Richard Wright und Ralph Ellison."
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de Sabloniere, Margrit. "Afrekening van ein Buitenstaander."
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1953i, 164-165.

Scott, Nathan A., Jr. "The Dark and Haunted Tower of
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93-990

 

. "Search for Beliefs: Richard Wright." University
of Kansas City Review, XXIII (Winter, 1956), 131-138.

 

. "Search for Beliefs: Fiction of Richard Wright."
University of Kansas City Review, XXIII (Autumn,
1956), 19—24.

 

Seeman, Melvin. "On the Meaning of Alienation." Amerigan
Sociological Review, XXIV, 6 (December, 1959), 783-
791.

Sillen, Samuel. "'Native Son: Pros and Con." New Masses,

 

 

. "The Meaning of Bigger Thomas." New Masses,
XXXV (April 30, 1940), 26-28.

 

. "The Response to Native_Son." New Masses,

 

 

Singh, Raman K. "The Black Novel and Its Tradition."
The Colorado Quarterly, XX, 1 (Summer, 1971), 23-29.

 

. "Wright's Tragic Vision in The Outsider."
Studies in Black Literature (Special Issue on

 

 

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Smith, William G. "Richard Wright, 1908-1960:. The Com-
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No. 6 (Summer, 1961), 67-69.

 

Eflordo, [Elnrique . "Richard Wright y la Epopeya Negra."
Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos (Spain), No. 49
(January, 1954), 110-114.

 

Sprague, M. D. "Richard Wright: A Bibliography." Bulletin
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Sprandel, Katherine. "The Long Dream." New Letters (Special
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88-96.
Timmerman, John. "Symbolism as a Syndetic Device in
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Turner, Darwin T. "The Oupsider: Revision of an Idea."
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deVaal, Hans. "Interview mid Richard Wright." Litterair
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Watson, Edward A. "Bessie's Blues." New Letters (Special
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64-700

Webb, Constance. "What Next for Richard Wright?" Phylon,
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Weigel, Henrietta; Benjamin Appel; Harry Budoff; Winburn
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Wertham, Frederic. "An Unconscious Determinant in Native
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White, Grace McSpadden. "Wright's Memphis." New Letters

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White, Ralph K. "Black Boy: A Value Analysis." Journal
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HICHIGRN STRTE UNIV . LIBRRRIES
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