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Monday, October 5, 2015

WAEC Literature: Bigger Thomas in Native Son

The concept of alienation played a lot in the life of Bigger Thomas. This is a boy whose sensibilities have been smeared by the racial prejudice in which he grew up. His service in the house of mr and mrs Dalton is not with any amount of job satisfaction. And this is why he does his work as a chauffeur with resignation which eventually led the tragedy that befell the Dalton family later in the novel. Bigger is billed to drive Mary Dalton to the university that evening but Mary behaving like a spoilt child directs their to her boy friend Jan who takes her to a restaurant that Saturday evening where they got drunk and Bigger has to bring her home in the night. At home Bigger starts touching her breast, but the blind mrs Dalton enters the room and in an attempt to hide his action, Bigger places a pillow on the face of Mary to prevent her from talking and create an illusion that no one is in the room. This action led to the accidental death of Mary and Bigger becomes guilty of murder. It can be stated that the murder of Mary is a dramatic release of pent up feelings of Biger Thomas grown over the years emanating from a series of indignities suffered by the blacks at the hands of the white man .Even the government prosecutor at the trial of Bigger Thomas is latently aware of this without obvious statement of that fact.The Coroner pretended ignorance of this but the self-appointed defender of the culprit drew heavily on that knowledge in his attempt to ameliorate the crime and at least secure a jail term for Bigger Thomas instead of death sentence. There are two focal points of murder hanging on the neck of Bigger Thomas. It will be recalled that in his attempt to hide the fact that he killed Mary Dalton he has to kill his girlfriend Bessie who was so hysterical in her reaction to the murder of Mary Dalton. But in the ensuing trial nothing much is heard of the murder of Bessie. The accusation is that he killed a white lady, which means that if it is only Bessie that he killed, there might even have been no trial. This is why racial prejudice and racism should be condemned in all its ramifications. The WAEC Literary series continues.