Hopefully it is not too late to come back to Native Son. I thought Wright did an excellent job in showing the different ways whites reacted to blacks during his time. Mr. Dalton, Mary, Jan, Britten, Max, Peggy, and Buckley represent different attitudes common among whites during Wright's time. I will focus on Mr. Dalton and Peggy. Mr. Dalton is a rich white man who proudly talks of his support of the NAACP. He donates much money in support of blacks. However, none of this is that great when you consider where he sends the money to: The South Side Boys' Club. He gives them ping-pong tables. Even Bigger says that he and his friends occasionally commit crimes there. Thus the money does not go anywhere useful. Mr. Dalton represents rich white people in Wright's time who would donate money and support the black cause, but because they don't really understand blacks, they cannot truly help them. We talked about a sort of blindness between blacks and whites in Native Son. I think this is a great example of that. Mr. Dalton wants to help black people, but he doesn't understand them. At the same time, blacks might not let the whites understand them, perhaps because they have to retreat behind the stereotype of the subservient, simple-minded black person. This is one of the points Wright is trying to make. Even Bigger comes to this conclusion at the end of the book. He realizes that he wants to go and interact with people: understand them 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).
Although we didn't talk much about Peggy, I felt there was a lot to her character. Peggy, the Irish maid, adds another aspect of how whites react to blacks in the book. On one hand, Peggy is able to sympathize with Bigger--the Irish were often discriminated against in America. Also, the Irish were subject to harsh British rule--a sort of parallel to how blacks were enslaved in America. Both Peggy's and Bigger's ancestors share common troubles. This would explain why Peggy is very kind to Bigger. At the same time, even Bigger notices something is off. Peggy always says "us" when referring to the Daltons and always talks about Bigger's "people." When the Irish began immigrating to the US, they were discriminated against as "lesser whites." Oftentimes they came to America because they fell on hard times in Ireland. Thus, their low status led to much hatred and rioting against them. In America they were often considered just as inferior as blacks. Since the Irish had to compete with blacks for the same jobs, they often distanced themselves from blacks to show they were not like them. Although the novel is set in the 1930s, this history might explain Peggy's attitude towards Bigger.
Both Peggy and Mr. Dalton are just two examples of the wide variety of reactions Wright wrote in his novel towards blacks. The novel does a good job in portraying the relations between blacks and whites during the 1930s.
Both Peggy and Mr. Dalton are just two examples of the wide variety of reactions Wright wrote in his novel towards blacks. The novel does a good job in portraying the relations between blacks and whites during the 1930s.
I realy like the interesting comparison you make between Bigger's situation and Peggy's. However do you think that her situation parallels Bigger closely enough that it was Wright's intention? Do you think that the fact that she was a maid reflects on some discrimination that she faces? Or do you think that Wright was trying to comment on the overall problem which isn't just white oppression vs. black people, but rather white Americans vs. all minorities? This could tie in with Max the Jewish lawyer, and Jan the communist. I don't really know the answers to these questions, just bouncing ideas around. Again, great food for thought Sunjay!
ReplyDeletePeggy is definitely an interesting character--how she wants to align herself (because of her whiteness, which, as you note, would NOT have automatically been granted by the wider society) with the Daltons almost as family (the "we" you refer to), even as she vouches for Mr. Dalton's faultless charity toward "Negroes." There's a complicated dance between identifying with Bigger and not *wanting* to be identified with him--to distance herself from him, in fact, by placing herself in the position of kind hostess rather than fellow employee. Wright depicts a kind of jostling for position among the exploited, and you're right that, historically, the Irish haven't always been considered "white" in terms of social privilege. On the surface, their roles are quite parallel: she cooks for them, he drives them around. She does have seniority, but it's clear that she's trying to assert another kind of social difference between them.
ReplyDeleteAnd note that Bigger doesn't say that he and his gang actually committed crimes at the youth center--but they *planned* their "jobs" their. Somehow this is even more of an indictment of the ineffectuality of Dalton's efforts: he simply gives them a place to meet and plot petty crime! (We get a thorough sense of Wright's own views of such charity in "How 'Bigger' Was Born," where he describes his own experiences working in such a center.)
Wow that's interesting because I guess I just read Peggy into the Dalton family--just kind of including her whenever Bigger mentions "the Daltons." I think I assumed she aligned herself with them was not only because of her race but because she had been with the Daltons for so long. But, I bet Bigger lumped her with them because she was white like them, in the same way that he originally included Jan and Max under that umbrella of white people who all treat him the same (though with them he quickly reversed this). She treated him as the Daltons did: with a politeness but no real respect.
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