Bigger and Dr. Bledsoe

In Native Son, we discussed how Bigger never shows anyone his true personality. He acts subservient towards whites and puts up a wall of emotionlessness towards his family. It is only in prison where we see Bigger's true thoughts and feelings. Similarly, Bledsoe has two masks. To the whites he is humble, gracious, and servile. To blacks he shows himself as a leader wanting to further the black community. The narrator believes this until he finally reads Bledsoe's letters. Both Bledsoe and Bigger were low in status and use masks to try and raise themselves. They also become their masks. Bledsoe becomes greedy for power and selfish. Bigger lets the idea of white superiority become ingrained in him. So far, we see that Bledsoe has not escaped the confines of the mask. Bigger, although too late, does manage to discard the masks. He even wants to go a step further--to understand people as they truly are and let them understand him: “He would not mind dying now if he could only find out what this meant, what he was in relation to all the others that lived, and the earth upon which he stood” (Wright 363).
 Another similarity between Bledsoe and Bigger is how they affect the people around them. Both of them managed to enlighten someone. Bledsoe taught the narrator of Invisible Man how to use the mask and not become it (as the narrator had earlier, truly believing in the superiority of white people). Ironically, Bledsoe himself is consumed by the mask he put on in desire for power. Likewise, Bigger was able to help Jan understand him and other blacks as individuals and not all the same. He might have also helped Max in understanding his situation and those with similar situations. Another way Bigger and Bledsoe affected people was in their perpetuating of stereotypes. Bledsoe continues to be the subservient black man to whites in an effort to rise in status. He even gets other black students like the narrator to do the same thing. Bigger also portrays the same stereotype in order to keep his job. However, Bigger becomes a second stereotype. That of the primitive and savage black man. In telling Britten how he did not want to eat with Jan and Mary, Bigger gives the media evidence that they could use to say that the primitive black people do not want to be disturbed by white society. In killing and "raping" Mary, Bigger becomes to white people the savage black man hungering after white women.

Bigger and Bledsoe, although seemingly vastly different characters, do share many similarities once you take a closer look.