Native Son Book Two Blog Q&A
Describe some of the many ways in which Bessie Mears, Bigger's girlfriend, is trapped in a life that is not of her own choosing (use concrete details).Bessie works at a nine to five pace as the housekeeper in the home of a white family. After work, she buys alcohol and gets drunk to escape her life. Because she doesn’t make enough money to buy enough alcohol to get drunk, Bessie relies on Bigger to buy her alcohol. In exchange for alcohol, Bessie agrees to have sex with Bigger. Bessie is unable to hope for a better life because she is black and does not have many options for jobs which, if she takes, she is able to provide for herself.
Describe the way Bigger is hunted down after he has fled the Dalton home. How would this manhunt have been different if Bigger were white?
The police allow volunteers, mostly white people but also a few black people, to hunt Bigger down. They essentially swarm Chicago, looking in all buildings to find Bigger. Each morning, the newspaper publishes a picture with the area that the volunteers have covered and the shrinking “safe area” that Bigger has. This occurs 24/7; they are searching for him day and night to find him. Bigger is also black, so he doesn’t have a large area to hide, because the black people are segregated and clustered into a small area to live, and even the people living in the Black Belt are terrified and would turn up Bigger to the police. If Bigger were white, I don’t think that the police or the volunteers would be so eager to search for him.
Mr. Dalton's private investigator, Mr. Britten, alternately expresses his hatred of African Americans and of Communists. After he interrogates Bigger, Bigger thinks to himself that "Mr. Britten was familiar to him; he had met a thousand Brittens in his life." What is it about Mr. Britten's thinking that makes him so easy for Bigger to understand, and how does Bigger intend to use Mr. Britten's prejudices to his own advantage?
Mr. Britten is not like Mr. Dalton, who has no prejudice against African Americans. Bigger understands his way of thinking because that is what he (Bigger) has grown up experiencing. Every white person that he has met before working for the Daltons has prejudices against African Americans. Bigger has formed a stereotype of white people, and Mr. Britten is no exception to this stereotype. Mr. Britten thinks that all African Americans are stupid and not at the level of whites. Because of this, he does not think that Bigger is capable of killing Mary Dalton. Bigger realizes this and intends to use it to his own advantage by making it seem like Jan, a known Communist, killed Mary. Bigger wants to blame the death of Mary on Jan and his Communist friends.
hugs&kisses, Maria(:
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