Native Son Essay: The Invisible Man

Native Son In the novel Native Son, Bigger, along with his family, faces an abundant amount of difficult decisions, each of which affects his life in one way, or another as the story progresses and develops. This novel deals with the hardships and pain that African Americans, particularly males, faced in the 1930s. Although Bigger is often viewed as being a villain of the novel, he was merely a product of the 20th century Chicago society. In the time period in which this novel is set in African Americans were somewhat seen as being invisible to white society, similar to the way the narrator feels in the Invisible Man. Bigger although, seen as a tough individual by others of his ethnicity, around the white people his whole demeanor is altered. He becomes very subservient and submissive; staying this way until the investigator hired to look into Mary Dalton’s disappearance calls him ‘Mike.’ Bigger finds this disturbing and quickly corrects him. Remember that at this time Bigger’s tone and behavior towards the white reporter was seen as being out of place and unexceptional (Bryant 263). …show more content…
They “walked along the street in the morning sunshine” and entered “the darkened movie” (qtd. in Van Hoose 47). This is done in order to figuratively remind the reader that Bigger is constantly crossing between the two worlds as he travels back and forth between his side of town and the nicer side of town where the Daltons live. Throughout the entire novel Wright uses “filmic techniques” to make his text more compelling to his readers (Gercken 633). He uses a way of writing that feels very visual which allows the reader to create their own visual images as they move forward with the story. Wright clearly planned on transferring his work to the big screen to be watched by audiences as