Native Son

Bigger lives in a run-down, rat-infested, one-room apartment with his mother, his sister Vera, and his brother Buddy. Mrs. Thomas has raised her three children alone since her husband was killed in a riot in Mississippi. She loves her family and wants desperately for her son to straighten out his life. Mrs. Thomas finds peace in religion, which Bigger believes makes her blind to the injustices around her. Bigger finds his mother’s raw, open emotion to be overwhelming and sometimes embarrassing. When Mrs. Thomas meets Mrs. Dalton in Bigger’s jail cell, she acknowledges her understanding of Mrs. Dalton’s loss as a mother, subtly indicating a point of equality in their very different experiences. But she embarrasses Bigger by appealing to Mrs. Dalton’s love as a mother to plead for her son’s life. Feeling like a disappointment to his mother feeds Bigger’s shame.

Buddy, Bigger’s younger brother, looks up to Bigger. He is perhaps the only person in the novel who trusts and believes in Bigger unconditionally. Buddy doesn’t seem to see or experience the same hate that Bigger feels. When Bigger drops the roll of money, Buddy returns it and offers to help his brother without knowing anything about the extent of his troubles. Buddy is willing to help Bigger fight his way out of jail, a naïve but loving offer that he makes without knowing if Bigger is even guilty.

Vera is the middle Thomas sibling. At the beginning of the novel, she is attending sewing classes at the YMCA, following in the footsteps of her mother, who works as a seamstress and laundress. Bigger likes to tease Vera, even though she is sensitive and gets very upset. After Bigger is arrested, Vera is too embarrassed to go to class because she feels like the other girls are staring at her. Vera’s self-consciousness is similar to Bigger’s hypervigilance about people watching him.

Bigger’s three friends, Gus, G.H., and Jack, are his gang. They commit crimes and robberies together, but they don’t trust each other. Bigger pushes them to rob Blum’s Deli as a sort of final effort to avoid the need to get a job. But Bigger is too scared to rob a white man. He knows that his friends are scared too, but they are all afraid to show weakness by admitting it. Bigger picks a fight with Gus, showing the precarious nature of the uneasy friendship between the four men.

A white multimillionaire, Mr. Dalton fancies himself a great philanthropist and humanitarian for the cause of poor, uneducated African Americans because he donates large amounts of money to organizations like the NAACP and the South Side Boy’s Club, and hires Black men (one at a time, at least) to be servants in his house. But as a real estate mogul, he contributes to racial oppression by charging higher rent for Black tenants in dilapidated buildings. Although Mr. Dalton is proud to announce that he gives money to fund education for Black people, he also admits in court that he has never hired one of the Black men he has had educated. Max asks Mr. Dalton to see his role in maintaining the systemic oppression that keeps Black people and white people separated, but he refuses to understand.

Mrs. Dalton, Mary Dalton’s mother, is blind, a character trait that serves as a metaphor for the white refusal to see or acknowledge the lived experiences of Black people. Mrs. Dalton is proud to have paid to educate the family’s previous chauffeur and immediately extends the promise to do the same for Bigger, but this comes off as condescending and has little to do with what Bigger wants for himself.

Mary (like Bigger) is twenty years old. She is white, rich, a student at the university, and politically active. Mary has the open trust of someone who has had an easy life. She subscribes to communist ideals and advocates earnestly for racial equality but was also raised wealthy and personally owns a quarter of a million dollars in real estate. She has been insulated from Black experience and doesn’t understand that even though she is trying to be kind, she is making Bigger uncomfortable and treating him as if he is an object to be studied. Mary also doesn’t understand that being alone and drunk with a Black man puts Bigger in danger, just as she doesn’t realize that discussing unions and communism with Bigger in front of her father could jeopardize his job. Young and beautiful, she is the epitome of what white supremacists are afraid that Black men will corrupt.

Like Mary, Jan is a communist and naïve to the fact that they are making Bigger uncomfortable and putting him in a precarious spot by trying to treat him like an equal. Jan is in love with Mary, even though Mr. Dalton does not approve of him because of his political affiliation. Bigger sees Jan as an easy target to take the blame for Mary’s disappearance, and he ends up being correct until Jan produces an alibi. But unlike Mr. and Mrs. Dalton, Jan puts his grief for Mary in perspective compared to centuries of racial inequality and violence. He forgives Bigger and learns to understand why Bigger hates white people. Jan extends friendship to Bigger and help through the legal assistance of Boris Max. Jan’s words are the first to break through Bigger’s blanket hatred of white people and Bigger is surprised to see him as a man.

Bessie, Bigger’s girlfriend, is exhausted and overwrought, entrenched in the endless hours she spends earning a living doing domestic work. Whereas Mrs. Thomas uses religion to escape, Bessie uses alcohol. She loves Bigger and begs him to stay even after he’s cruel and abusive. She has even allowed him to steal from the houses where she has worked in the past. But at heart, Bessie is not a criminal. Involvement in a murder and fake kidnapping is too much for Bessie, even for Bigger’s sake. Unlike Mary, whose death unleashes a cavalry, Bessie’s life is treated as expendable both by the society that is working her to death and Bigger, who kills her to keep her quiet after forcing her to help him. And despite the proof of brutality in Bigger’s rape and murder of Bessie, Bigger isn’t tried for her death. Bessie only enters the court case against him as evidence for Mary’s murder.

Max is a lawyer from the Labor Defender’s office, which is the legal arm of the Communist Party. Boris takes on Bigger’s case at Jan’s request. Because Max is Jewish, he has some understanding of the experience of oppression and discrimination. Max founds his defense on the belief that the murders Bigger committed are the result of a lifetime of enduring racism and hate. He approaches Bigger’s case as a social cause, pushing Bigger not to give up because his defense means something much larger than Bigger’s individual life. Throughout the novel, no one understands Bigger or can recognize his anger as the result of injustice. While preparing his defense, Max inadvertently leads Bigger to ponder his own actions and the way anger and oppression have obliterated his sense of self. Max also seems to care about Bigger and visits him before he’s executed. But even though he is the first person to understand and articulate Bigger’s experiences, he is disturbed when Bigger explains for himself, realizing that the effect of white supremacy is even deeper than he had known.