Feeling Things Hard Enough

When we are born, we don't usually actively question our place in society or where society has placed us. As we grow older,  however, we become increasingly aware of our position in relation to our peers and the rest of the world. We start to recognize the ways in which we are privileged and the ways in which we might be at a disadvantage -- more often, we see most clearly what others possess that we do not. It is not too difficult to articulate these observations. Observations like: I can walk and she can't. My father earns more money than his does. I am sicker than them.  In Native Son by Richard Wright, Bigger is able to articulate his observations of the unequal position society has pushed him into clearly enough when he says to Gus, "...Every time I think about it I feel like somebody's poking a red-hot iron down my throat. Godammit, look! We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't..." Of all the injustice in his life, Bigger is astutely aware. What is difficult for Bigger to articulate then, is the "somebody" that is forcing the iron down his throat, and the meaning of the burning sensation. He does not know exactly what or who to blame especially since some of the white people he encounters all claim to be on his side in some mixed up way. Perhaps it would be easier for him if he did know so that his fear would not be so aimless. Maybe if he believed in a God, he could hold him accountable for every aspect of his life and believe that circumstances are out of his hands. What makes the fear and anger that perpetually consumes Bigger so toxic is how similar it is to a chronic disease with an unknown cure. The fear that cannot be articulated lives there in the pit of his stomach --  yet that fear can't always be at the front of his mind, he must get up, eat, walk, go get a job -- all the while knowing none of these acts will resolve the tension underneath it at all. What makes Bigger unique from his friends and family is that there is a part of him that wants to act but knows not how, believing a bit of control may be within his reach -- but at what point do we accept something as hopeless, inexplicable, and just something we have to live with? At what point do we decide thinking about some unjust situation is pointless and that it is far better to get drunk and sleep it off? For some reason, even though Bigger handles his circumstances differently than his friends and family, I feel that in a paradoxical way, Bigger is ultimately reduced to the same sort of tragic acceptance as them. One of the lines that struck me the most is what Bigger says to Max towards the end of the novel: "...I didn't know I was really alive in this world until I felt things hard enough to kill for 'em..." There is a freedom in giving up. It isn't true freedom but is at the very least a twisted relief in freeing yourself from not only other peoples' expectations but from your old expectations of yourself. Though Bigger believes he has reached a state of enlightenment, when it comes down to it, Bigger did not kill Mary or Bessie for intentions beyond survival but the exhilaration and deluded understanding he felt was a result of the release from the predestined path he seemed to have laid out for him. With his tension pushed to the point of exhaustion, his ultimate form of acceptance is not so different from Bessie living for the deluded numbness of alcohol.