“Native Son” by Richard Wright (post 2): Bigger kills a white girl.

Bigger, the new chauffeur for the rich, white, Daltons (who have contributed millions of dollars to African-American schools), has driven the family’s headstrong daughter, Mary, home, after her date with a communist friend. 

Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her room, where she now sleeps in her clothes on her bed. But before Bigger can leave her bedroom, Mary’s blind mother, Mrs. Dalton, enters Mary’s room.

Bigger is panicked to be found with the white girl in her bedroom. Mary mumbles and moves on her bed, so Bigger—fearing these sounds and movements will draw Mrs. Dalton to Mary’s side, and in the process, make her aware of his presence in the room—covers Mary’s mouth with his hand and a pillow.

Mrs. Dalton says, “Mary! Are you asleep? I heard you moving about,” but then exclaims, “You’re dead drunk! You stink with whiskey!” (1, p. 86). She prays, and leaves the room.

Bigger then realizes that his restraint of Mary’s mouth and movements have accidentally suffocated her. She is dead. And in his panic, he decides that he must dispose of the body, which he does by putting it in the building’s furnace, to cremate it.

Comment

Since Mrs. Dalton had been described as super-sensitive to her surroundings, in compensation for her blindness, it seems unlikely that she would not hear either Bigger’s breathing or the cessation of her daughter’s breathing. Also, I do not see why Bigger did not just leave the body on the bed, since his presence in Mary’s bedroom was not known.

On the other hand, since it was Bigger’s job (besides driving the car) to tend to the furnace, he would be connected to any bones found there.

In short, I find the above pivotal event, as written, implausible. But the plot required that Bigger kill a white girl.

1. Richard Wright. Native Son [1940]. New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005.