Bigger’s Mental State in Native Son
－through Depth Psychology－
Minoru Morioka
Introduction
In this paper, I would like to think about the mental state of Bigger Thomas, the hero of Native Son (1) (Wright, 1940) in terms of Depth Psychology, above all using the ideas of C. G. Jung (1875-1961). The structure of Native Son is simple. Richard Wright divides the novel into three parts: “Fear,” “Fight,” and “Fate.” To some extent, he asserts a determinism acting through Bigger’s status and place in American life and displaying itself in his fate, actions, thoughts, values and attitudes. While dealing with some of the faults usual in proletarian fiction, Wright is more concerned to explore Bigger’s psychological progress, dwelling first on his mental states as an outsider from the rules of social and racial behavior after his two brutal murders. Bigger establishes his own ideas about his life and world. This can be called a self-realization. In this way, he rejects deterministic Marxism through the pursuit of his own original and experimental ideas.
Bigger lives with his mother, sister and brother in a dim apartment in a South Side Chicago slum. He recognizes his own inclination for violence, which leads to feelings of vague anxiety. After he is hired as a chauffer by Mr.Dalton, a rich white philanthropical to Negroes, Bigger accidentally kills Dalton’ daughter Mary. Although he decides to assume the responsibility for her death, he feels that he is excluded by oppressive forces that bring him misery. While fleeing with his girlfriend, Bessie, he kills her for fear that she will reveal his first murder. Later in jail, various attempts to convert him to Christianity and make him meet Mary’s family end in vain. The newspapers, the police, and politicians make use of him for their own self-aggrandizement. Only communists like his attorney Max defend him. Max makes efforts to help and understand Bigger, and tries to explain his crimes in terms of historical slavery and racial exploitation. Bigger gradually awakens to a sense of hope and trust in others. Yet although Max genuinely endeavors to grant him dignity, Bigger cannot totally assent to Max’s ideas. Bigger’s new vision that the world is under the control of stereotype thoughts enables him to see how blind people are, whether white or black, to his humanity and existence. Just as he seizes upon his spiritual freedom, he is compelled to receive punishment.
I wish to discuss what makes Bigger commit murder, what he thinks about in his cell, and why he rejects Max at the end of this novel, all of this in relation to his attainment of self-realization, and with reference to Depth Psychology.
Ⅰ. Nothingness
In this novel, Bigger fears white society. But he has also a strong fear of himself. Because Bigger cannot control his emotional and physical powers, he is always irritated. The more irritated he is, the more he adds to his anxiety, which is rooted in his fears toward his environment and culture. Bigger’s impulses are too strong to calm down. However, all humans have impulses of a similar kind, whether strong or not. Jung argues, in his Two Essays on Analytical Psychology:
The growth of culture consists, as we know, in a progressive subjugation of the animal in man. It is a process of domestication which cannot be accomplished without rebellion on the part of the animal nature that thirsts for freedom. (2)
Bigger, furthermore, is poor and helpless. He does not have enough vitality to support his family. His helplessness is shown in the opening scene of the novel, where he has to deal with a rat loose in his family’s room. After Bigger kills the rat and scares his sister with its dead body, his mother says “Bigger, sometimes I wonder why I birthed you.” (11) This hurts his feelings badly. Bigger realizes that he is powerless to help his family in spite of their sufferings.
He [Bigger] knew that the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they lived, the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. (13)
The feeling of ‘nothingness' drives him to plan a robbery of a store called Blum’s, with his friend. At the same time, he also enjoys the fantasy world of a movie theater with his friend Jack. For the space of the movie, he is able to forget the misery of real life by becoming briefly caught up in a longed-for world. The darkness hides his black skin and makes him feel inconspicuous. The film, entitled “The Gay Woman,”shows a splendid and rich white people’s world. Bigger is fascinated with it. So he reflects on a relief job he has been offered. Until moments before, he has been despising the idea of accepting it:
“You know, I ’d just as soon go to jail as take that damn relief job,”Bigger said. (32)
But now he begins to feel that that the chance of working in white society might open up the way to a happy life like in the movie scene.
“Yeah. And she’s [movie heroine is] a hot looking number, all right,” Bigger said, “Say, maybe I’ll be working for folks like that if I take that relief job. Maybe I’ll be driving ’em around...” (33)
Yes, his [Bigger’s] going to work for the Daltons was something big. Maybe Mr. Dalton was a millionaire. Maybe he had a daughter who was a hot kind of girl; maybe she spent lots of money; maybe she’d like to come to the South Side and see the sights sometimes. Or maybe she had a secret sweet-heart and only he would know about it because he would have to drive her around; maybe she would give him money not to tell. (36)
After watching the movie, he abandons the idea of robbing the store. Bigger unconsciously covers up his fear of having to carry out the robbery by provoking a fight with another of his friends, Gus. He is in fact transferring his fear of white society into his quarrel with Gus.
From Bigger’s behavior two kinds of instinct are seen. These correspond to what Jung has called the‘constructive' and the‘destructive' instinct. Fighting can be thought of as the result of a destructive instinct and working to build up a happy life as the result of a constructive instinct. Jung, quoting Freud, discusses the working of these two instincts as follows:
Freud himself, with advancing years, admitted this lack of balance in his theory, and he opposed to Eros, whom he called libido, the destructive or death instinct. In his posthumous writings he says: “After long hesitancies and vacillations we have decided to assume to assume the existence of only basic instincts, Eros and the destructive instinct .... The aim of the first of these basic instincts is to establish ever greater unities and to preserve them thus─in short, to bind together; the aim of the second is, on the contrary, to undo connections and so to destroy things....For this reason we also call it the death instinct. ” (3)
However, the daydream Bigger imagines from the movie experience turns out in the novel to be a nightmare. His fate abruptly catches up with him and drives him to murder.
Ⅱ. Solitude
Bigger is fascinated with the gorgeous life in the film. He thinks it may come true for him if he takes the job with the Daltons. As he comes near the Daltons’ residence, he feels the fear and anxiety facing him in a white neighborhood. It forces him to be conscious of his own black background so that he almost regrets coming to work for the Daltons:
This was a cold and distant world; a world of white secrets carefully guarded. He could feel a pride, a certainty, and a confidence in these streets and houses. He came to Drexel Boulevard and began to look for 4605. When he came to it, he stopped and stood before a high, black, iron picket fence, feeling constricted inside. All he had felt in the movie was gone; only fear and emptiness filled him now. (45)
Culture is, in a sense, a symbol of power (authority). He even feels choked with the oppression of white society. Why is Bigger so uneasy and fearful? Jung says interesting things about this:
The power-instinct wants the ego to be “on top” under all circumstances, by fair means or foul. The “integrity of the personality” must be preserved at all costs. Every attempt, be it only an apparent attempt, of the environment to obtain the slightest ascendency over the subject is met, to us Adler’s expression, by the “masculine protest.” (4)
Bigger’s solitude gradually grows after his arrival at the Daltons. And the goodwill shown to him by the Daltons’ daughter Mary and her left wing boyfriend Jan only makes him more aware of his black skin. Bigger wonders if they are trying to ridicule and humiliate him. Furthermore, he feels a basic incapacity for communicating with white people, as is evident when the three of them visit a restaurant called Ernie’s Kitchen Shack frequented by black people. Bigger has no common topics of conversation with them. He does not even know how to speak to white people. He simply repeats his stereotype reply,“yessum / yessuh". In the end their openness only brings him into perplexity:
This thing was getting the better of him; he felt that he should not give way to his feelings like this. But he could not help it. Why didn’t they leave him alone? What had he done to them? What good could they get out of sitting here making him feel so miserable? (70)
Although Jan and Mary have a vision of a common bond of human life, Bigger isn’t able to accept their vision. He lives in a different world. More generally, each individual lives within his/her own beliefs. Bigger cannot latch onto their vision. He is not accustomed to abstract speculations. According to Jung, dreams and life are always to be interpreted in two ways. There is ‘an interpretation on the objective level’ and ‘an interpretation on the subjective level’. Jan and Mary share a common framework of ‘communism', which is, in these terms, an interpretation on the objective level'. The possibility of Bigger understanding their talk lies in ‘an interpretation on the subjective level'. Bigger cannot have a conception without it being based on his own experience. Jung explains the two interpretations as follows:
I call every interpretation which equates the dream images with real objects ‘an interpretation on the objective level'. In contrast to this is the interpretation which refers every part of the dream and all the actors in it back to the dreamer himself. This I call‘interpretation on the subjective level'.‘Interpretation on the objective level' is analytic, because it breaks down the dream content into memory-complexes that refer to external situations. Interpretation on the subjective level is synthetic, because it detaches the underlying memory-complexes from their external causes, regards them as tendencies or components of the subject, and reunites them with that subject.
(In any experience I experience not merely the object but first and foremost myself, provided of course that I render myself an account of the experience.) (5)
I have cited at length because this argument also has something to do with the novel’s last scene which shows Bigger’s rejection of his lawyer, Max, as will be discussed below. Though Jan may appear to be friendly and supportive towards black people, he does not stand on an equal level with them in reality. This kind of cheerfulness and openness is a kind of torture for Bigger, as he has no wish to be treated this way from the beginning.
Ⅲ. Murder
After Bigger has killed Mary, he begins to apprehend the meaning of his murder. He thinks of what the action has made of him. Mary tried to set Bigger up as equal with white people, but this was only troublesome to Bigger, and in the end he accidentally killed Mary. In spite of this murder, he does not feel any responsibility, because he does not identify with the law that white people have made, and in any case it was an accident. All the same Bigger must begin to live with the fear of the electric chair. Yet in spite of the murder, he can sense a kind of creation in him building up a new inner self. He begins to act according to what he perceives as his‘will'. At the same time he consciously becomes an ‘outsider'. He has never felt a sense of wholeness before throwing Mary Dalton’s body in the furnace to hide his murder. Why is he content with himself in such a terrible situation? Jung gives the suggestion of an answer:
In reality human nature bears the burden of a terrible and unending conflict between the principle of the ego and the principle of instinct....The power-instinct wants the ego to be “on top” under all circumstances, by fair means or foul. The “integrity of the personality” must be preserved at all costs. Every attempt, be it only an apparent attempt, of the environment to obtain the slightest ascendency over the subject is met, to use Adler’s expression, by the “masculine protest.” (6)
Bigger establishes his urge to power in just this way. His sense of‘will' seems to correspond closely with Jung’s ‘ego-instinct'.
Gus and G. H and Jack seemed far away to Bigger now, in another life, and all because he had been in Dalton's home for a few hours and had killed a white girl. （100）
He had murdered and created a new life for himself. It was something that was all his own, and it was the first time in his life he had had anything that others could not take from him. （101）
But excessive self-confidence gives rise to ‘ego-inflation’ as Jung says. Shortly afterwards, Bigger dreams of the possibility of his being a leader of the black people. He feels that all black people should act together in order to end their fear and shame. A powerful leader should arise to stand up for them, rule them, tell them what to do, and guide them. Bigger dreams of doing this himself:
Of late he had liked to hear tell of men who could rule others, for in actions such as these he felt that there was a way to escape from this tight morass of fear and shame that sapped at the base of his life. He liked to hear of how Japan was conquering China; of how Hitler was running the Jews to the ground; of how Mussolini was invading Spain.
(109-110)
This state seems very similar to what Jung calls‘will to power'. Jung talks about ‘will to power', referring to Nietzsche:
It is of this last instinct, the‘will to power', that Nietzsche obviously speaks. Whatever else is instinctual only follows, for him, in the train of the will to power...The seizure transforms him into a hero or into a godlike being, a super-human entity. He rightly feels himself “six thousand feet beyond good and evil.” (7)
Bigger certainly seems to feel this kind of boundless self-confidence. After he has become an ‘outsider', first sitting at the breakfast table with his family, and later while overhearing Peggy and Mrs. Dalton talking in the kitchen, he sees how ‘blind' they all were. He feels a surge of freedom and a sense that thinks he can exercise his will as he pleases:
He felt in the quiet presence of his mother, brother, and sister a force, inarticulate and unconscious, making for living without thinking, making for peace and habit, making for a hope that blinded. He felt that they wanted and yearned to see life in a certain way; they needed a certain picture of the world; there was one way of living they preferred above all others; and they were blind to what did not fit. (102)
He felt that he had his destiny in his grasp. He was more alive than he could ever remember having been; his mind and attention were pointed, focused toward a goal...he was moving toward that sense of fullness he had so often but inadequately felt in magazines and movies. (141)
Bigger could have committed a murder before he actually did. If he has not, it is only because he has not had the occasion to do so. After the murder of Mary, and then the second one of his girlfriend Bessie, he is able to feel a real order in his life. He feels connected with the outer world for the first time. Up until this point, Bigger has suffered from the gap between the consciousness in his mind and the reality of the world. With his lack of verbal skill and training, he has been unable to join into a relation with the outer world. In other words, his failure to establish a balance between the conscious understanding of his emotional inner reality and the real facts of the outer world has been due to the incompleteness of communication. Now that stark facts has awaken his vivid sense of the real world around him, ironically the fear of arrest cures him of his isolation from the real world. So far, he has been looking on at the outer world from behind the ‘curtain’. Now he learns to keep his composure, while looking straight at it:
In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him. He was living, truly and deeply, no matter what others might think, looking at him with their blind eyes. Never had he had the chance to live out the consequences of his actions; never had his will been so free as in this night and day of fear and murder and flight. (225)
As I mentioned before, Bigger is caught up in materialism and his ‘will to power'. Psychologically, the ‘will to power' is the opposite of love. (8) ‘Will to power' produces a desire of material things. Bigger has never loved his second victim Bessie in a true sense. He considers her a mere property or usable commodity, and when the time comes, he has no hesitation in disposing of her materially, by battering her head with a brick:
What could he do with her [Bessie]? She would be a dangerous burden. It would be impossible to take her if she were going to act like this, and yet he could not leave her here. Coldly, he knew that he had to take her with him, and then at some future time settle things with her, settle them in a way that would not leave him in any danger. (215)
Bigger’s true tragedy is this imprisonment in materialism, which he finally only overcomes after talking to his lawyer in jail.
Ⅳ. In the cell
After being arrested, Bigger ceased to struggle any more physically. Indeed, he tries to destroy his feelings. He resolves not to react to anything. Whenever an urge to comply begins to show itself in him, he paralyzes it immediately. At this stage, he is perhaps preparing to attain Jung’s state of‘self-realization'. Humble sincerity is the path to self-realization. But he cannot see this. Furthermore, his pride remains in spite of his confinement. In fact, his existence is supported by this pride to some extent. He cannot bear being mocked and made use of by white people. For instance, he has a deep hostility toward Buckley, the State’s Attorney, who intends to make use of the judgment agaist Bigger for the purpose of a coming election. Buckley’s way of thinking is also ‘materialist’. People of his type see the meaning of life in ‘materials’ or ‘objects' (in a broader sense) such as money, status, fame, or fortune. They see the world‘on the objective level' as Jung says.
In jail, Bigger gradually goes inside himself. This attitude is encouraged by his interview with Max. When first arrested, Bigger sees a flaming cross above the heads of the watching crowd. He feels betrayed and loses any religious hope. He makes up his mind to be independent. As a result, he becomes isolated again. But after seeing Max, he feels an enormous sense of relief. Max’s concern is for the background to Bigger’s behavior, in American history. White people were too engrossed in building up their nation on a vast scale to pay attention to the human needs of black people. But a feeling of guilt towards black people remained, which white people tried desperately to justify on any grounds. Black people are still looking for opportunities to improve their lot． According to Max’s analysis, it can be said that it is the oppression white society has imposed on black people that leads to Bigger’s crime.
His crime existed long before the murder of Mary Dalton; ... the accidental nature of his crime took the guise of a sudden and violent rent in the veil behind which he lived, a rent which allowed his feelings of resentment and estrangement to leap forth and find objective and concrete form. (361)
What connections are there between individual guilt and civilization? Did American history really have this kind of effect on Bigger’s crime? Jung addresses this question.
What is true of humanity in general is also true of each individual, for humanity consists only of individuals. And as is the psychology of humanity so also is the psychology of the individual. The World War brought a terrible reckoning with the rational intentions of civilization. What is called‘will’ in the individual is called “imperialism” in nations; for all will is a demonstration of power over fate, i.e., the exclusion of chance. Civilization is the rational,“purposeful” sublimation of free energies, brought about by will and intention. (9)
Max’s sincerity moves Bigger to talk. Max asks Bigger not what actually happened but why it happened. The relationship between Max and Bigger is equivalent to that between a doctor and a patient. The patient is inclined to consider the doctor his parent, uncle, teacher or so on. Sometimes the patient even looks on the doctor as a savior or godlike being. In this sense, Max seems to play the role of teacher. Psychologically the relation is called ‘transference'. Jung describes it like this:
The transference is in itself no more than a projection of unconscious contents. At first the so-called superficial contents of the unconscious are projected, as can be seen from symptoms, dreams and fantasies. In this state the doctor is interesting as a possible lover. Then he appears more in the role of the father: either the good, kind father or the “thunderer,”depending on the qualities which the real father had for the patient. (10)
Ⅴ. Self-realization
Max insists Bigger’s crime is also an act of creation. Black people are laboring under difficult conditions. The soul seeks for fullness and wholeness in terms of cosmic images and symbols. It has a strong passion for improvement, created from the impulse of self-realization. As Max sees it, Bigger is yearning to establish his personality.
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 free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act and to feel that his actions carried weight. (364)
Max later sums this up succinctly:
“Your Honor, remember that men can starve from a lack of self- realization as much as they can from a lack of bread! (366)
Jung discusses self-realization in the following way.
Men has two aims: the first is the natural aim, the begetting of children and the business of protecting the brood; to this belongs the acquisition of money and social position. When this aim has been reached a new phase begins: the cultural aim. For the attainment of the former we have the help of nature and, on top of that, education; for the attainment of the latter, little or nothing helps....What youth found and must find outside, the man of life’s afternoon must find within himself. (11)
A man is confronted with the task of finding a meaning that will enable him to continue living. That is, he has an impulse of self-realization. After his death sentence, Bigger tries to come to an conclusion about what his living and dying has meant. And he is aware that the answer comes from himself. He also imagines a state of perfect union. Union has the features of oneness and wholeness. Oneness enables us to melt away differences, such as color, sex, age, property ownership, class and so on. Bigger is most alive and feels things most vividly now that he is in jail. Many questions arise in him, for which he frantically seeks to find the answer.
Why this black gulf between him and the world: warm red blood here and cold blue sky there, and never a wholeness, a oneness, a meeting of the two? (383)
Max tries to console Bigger. He evokes a vision of human striving for him by pointing at the buildings of Chicago outside the jail:
“It’s the belief of men. If men stopped believing, stopped having faith, they’d come tumbling down. Those buildings sprang up out of the hearts of men, Bigger. Men like you. Men kept hungry, kept needing, and those buildings kept growing and unfolding.”....“Yes. What you felt, what you wanted, is what keeps those buildings standing there. When millions of men are desiring and longing, those buildings grow and unfold...”
(389-390)
As Max argues here, it would be rational to transfer his life-energy (the libido) into building up a community full of love. But the libido does not choose this path. The libido has already determined its object unconsciously. As explained in Jung’s interpretation of dream images ‘on the subjective level’ quoted above, Bigger has determined his action on the basis of his libido. Max’s ideal dream of ‘communism' is useless to Bigger, because it cannot be experienced by Bigger as an individual. The truth has to go through the individual and needs his peculiar experience. In Jung’s words:
The libido, as this psychic energy is technically called, already possesses its object unconsciously.... the real object generally offers the energy a much better gradient than do the most admirable ethical activities.... It is unhappily the case that no man can direct the so-called disposable energy at will. It follows its own gradient. Indeed, it had already found that gradient even before we set the energy free from the unserviceable form to which it was linked. (12)
Thus even if Max talks about his vision sincerely, it is of no value to Bigger. At this stage he has already reached his self-realization. It is a kind of dignity of self-realization in Bigger’s bearing that makes Max notice that his own vision is nothing but illusion. Max cannot offer anything to counter the greatness springing out of Bigger’s self.
Conclusion
It is clear that Bigger Thomas is an“Outsider.” He has searched for freedom. But the freedom he has longed for is not simply being allowed to do what he desires, but being able to exercise his will. He has to fight against the circumstances limiting men like him. At first any outsider lives in a field that is marginal. From here, he may return to the culture he once lived in with a new found‘mission'. What is his mission? He comes to a realization of his task to reform his culture. Freedom lies in finding a means of expression for this task. Bigger has become aware of his own consciousness through a certain contact with reality. It is Max, in the jail conversations who brings this experience of reality to Bigger. Ironically, just when Bigger ought to be returning to his home culture, he is condemned to the electric chair.
An outsider has certain characteristic features. One of them is his appetite for progress. After he has acquired his new way of thinking, his personal evolution gradually makes society as a whole accept his ideas. That is, social evolution is brought about after individual evolution in certain key persons. Another feature of the outsider is an urge to seek for “the meaning of life.” It seems that this meaning lies in self-realization. The outsider strives for this by dramatically overcoming obstacles, as Bigger does. In the process, he first passes through a kind of death-state. As he revives from this death, he goes through various hardships in his inner mental world. Finally, he seizes a treasure. It is a practical message of hope and truth for other people. It is the source of power for the reforming of culture.
In the earlier parts of Native Son, Bigger cannot find any way to break free of the cultural chains that oppress him, and he murders two women. Obviously, this is wrong, but it gives him a sense of absolute freedom, because it enables him to exercise his own will and to create a new and original world. For the first time in his life, he experiences the reality having a direct connection with other people. Although he now has to go to the electric chair, he has become convinced of a state of union in the world.
Notes
(１) All page references to Native Son are from the edition: Richard Wright, Native Son (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1989), and are inserted in parentheses directly following the quotation.
(２) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p.19.
(３) Ibid., p.28.
(４) Ibid., p.53.
(５) Ibid., p.84.
(６) Ibid., p.34, 38.
(７) Ibid., p.32-33.
(８) Jung says suggestive things about this: “Logically, the opposite of love is hate, and of Eros, Phobos (fear); but psychologically it is the will to power. Where love reigns, there is no will to power; and where the will to power is paramount, love is lacking.” (Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p.53).
(９) Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p.50.
(10) Ibid., p.64.
(11) Ibid., p.74.
(12) Ibid.,p.62.
Works Cited
Jung, C.G. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology Trans. by R.F.C Hull, New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1966.
Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1989.
References
Bloom, Harold. Richard Wright's “Native Son." New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
―――. Richard Wright. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.
―――. Bigger Thomas. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1990.
Felgar, Robert. Richard Wright. Boston: A Division of G. K. Hall & Co., 1980.
Kinnamon, Kenneth.,ed. New Essays on “Native Son.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Wilson, Colin. The Outsider. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1978.