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Violence induced by Fear



One thing I   found very interesting in the novel “Native Son,” written by Richard Wright, is his ability to make everything he writes what he set it out to be in the first place. For example, the whole first section of the book is entitled “Fear.” In this section, mostly everything that happens has something to do with fear. For instance, the book opens up with the scene of the huge rat in Bigger‘s home. Bigger’s Mother, Sister, and brother are all terrified of the huge rat. After he fears being turned out of his home for not getting a job, which eventually turns in to the fear of losing his standing with his friends for being afraid to rob Blum's Delicatessen. Simple things like this, is what makes this book so well done and thrilling.
One thing I also noticed in the book while reading, was the fact that whenever fear is induced into Bigger’s life, he automatically is turned into a violent person. It can be seen in multiple scenes starting with the rat again. Bigger gets pleasure out of killing the rat and then torments his sister with it to see her be uncomfortable and ultimately faint because of it. After he has already killed the rat, Bigger insist on making it as though the rat would never live again. “Bigger took a shoe and pounded the rat’s head, crushing it, cursing hysterically. You sonofabitch”(Wright, 6). Not only did his violence escalate because of the fear, his violence also turned into a malicious act. Bigger really did not have to crush its head in, and in the end, this can be seen as a foreshadowing of what is to come later in the novel.