Freedom as the Chance to Hope for Something Bigger in Native Son

As a nation, America was built upon the idealized tenet of freedom. Freedom could be defined as the chance to do something; it is the ideal on which the pursuit of every other American ideal is predicated. In his essay “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” W.E.B. Du Bois posits that there is a veil separating the African American experience from true freedom, as a debilitating sense of self-doubt results from the measuring of one’s selfhood through the eyes of others. As the tragic protagonist of Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, Bigger Thomas personifies this plight. Bigger Thomas stands markedly outside of the American ideal of freedom. 

Despite standing without the ideal of freedom, Bigger still finds the yearning for freedom within himself as any other American citizen might. In the beginning of the novel, Bigger watches an airplane and a bird fly overhead when he remarks to his friend Gus, “‘Now, if I could only do that… I reckon we the only things in this city that can’t go where we want to go and do what we want to do’” (Wright 21). Freedom is partially realized within his awareness of how he “always wanted to do something” (Wright 427); however, without the true freedom of a fighting chance, all hope of freedom is stymied as mobility, voice, and purpose are denied. In his courtroom defense of Bigger, Max summarizes this tension: “Excluded from, and unassimilated in our society, yet longing to gratify impulses akin to our own but denied the objects and channels evolved through long centuries for their socialized expression” (Wright 400). Wright employs imagery to convey how racial discrimination and class oppression serve as naturalist forces, forming a white veil of icy snow around the elusive opportunity of freedom. Having “lived on the outside of the lives of men” while being conditioned to believe in his own wicked meaninglessness, Bigger’s personhood is marked by a sense of futility, rather than a spirit of freedom (Wright 422). 

As an alien to freedom, Bigger lives hemmed in by fear and spurred on by hate. Never having a chance to do or desire anything bigger, even his heinous crimes feel inevitable. Typically, what follows the committing of a crime is a loss of freedom, as imprisonment inherently strips inmates of their full constitutional rights. Ironically, Bigger’s crime is the very thing that provides him with a sense of freedom, as Wright writes, 

“It was the first full act of his life; it was the most meaningful, exciting and stirring thing that had ever happened to him. He accepted it because it made him free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, of opportunity to act and to feel that his actions carried weight.” (Wright 396)

His exclusion from Americana’s vision of freedom meant that his very humanity was barred from fullness of meaning. Max even remarks that life in prison would be a greater conferral of life upon Bigger than his 20 years of freedom had ever been.

9 July 2024