Bigger Thomas and Jan Erlone: A Possibility of Interracial Friendship in Richard Wright’s Native Son
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This essay explores Native Son with a particular concern with Wright’s depictions of the relationships between Bigger Thomas and Jan Erlone. Prevailing criticism has long seen Bigger as a symbol of racial anger or as a man incapable of relations with others. But I challenge such criticism, arguing that Bigger becomes a person not through Mary’s murder, but through the human solidarity he has achieved with Jan. I look closely into the three pivotal encounters between Bigger and Jan: Jan’s initial blunder of approaching Bigger on a superficial level of Communist comradeship in “Fear”; Bigger’s guilt-driven threatening of Jan with a gun in an attempt to implicate him with Mary’s murder in “Flight”; and Jan’s last visit to Bigger’s cell to offer his forgiveness and reconciliation in “Fate.” The examination will show that Bigger’s acceptance of Jan’s friendship at the end of the novel is not an unmotivated or improvised event prompted by the self-abandoned murderer waiting to be executed in the electric chair, as many critics have inappropriately asserted, but a product thoroughly “earned” by Bigger and Jan going through sufficient conflicts, conversion, and growth. This mutual process also distinguishes Jan from Max, especially when Max begins to see Bigger as a social symbol during the trials and ultimately fails to understand him as an individual human being. Indeed, the friendship Bigger and Jan have established together upon understanding, shared humanity, reciprocity, and forgiveness and reconciliation remains at the novel’s end, and I will discuss its meaning in light of Wright’s vision of American race relations.
Abstract
This essay explores Native Son with a particular concern with Wright’s depictions of the relationships between Bigger Thomas and Jan Erlone. Prevailing criticism has long seen Bigger as a symbol of racial anger or as a man incapable of relations with others. But I challenge such criticism, arguing that Bigger becomes a person not through Mary’s murder, but through the human solidarity he has achieved with Jan. I look closely into the three pivotal encounters between Bigger and Jan: Jan’s initial blunder of approaching Bigger on a superficial level of Communist comradeship in “Fear”; Bigger’s guilt-driven threatening of Jan with a gun in an attempt to implicate him with Mary’s murder in “Flight”; and Jan’s last visit to Bigger’s cell to offer his forgiveness and reconciliation in “Fate.” The examination will show that Bigger’s acceptance of Jan’s friendship at the end of the novel is not an unmotivated or improvised event prompted by the self-abandoned murderer waiting to be executed in the electric chair, as many critics have inappropriately asserted, but a product thoroughly “earned” by Bigger and Jan going through sufficient conflicts, conversion, and growth. This mutual process also distinguishes Jan from Max, especially when Max begins to see Bigger as a social symbol during the trials and ultimately fails to understand him as an individual human being. Indeed, the friendship Bigger and Jan have established together upon understanding, shared humanity, reciprocity, and forgiveness and reconciliation remains at the novel’s end, and I will discuss its meaning in light of Wright’s vision of American race relations.
참고문헌 (23)
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