Skip over navigation  Native Son  Richard Wright  Book Three
(part one)  Book Two (part three)  Book Three (part two)  From
the opening of Book Three through Bigger signing his confession
In jail, Bigger lives in a world with no day, no night, and no
fear or hatred, as such emotions are useless to him now. He
feels gripped by a deep resolution to react to nothing, and he
says and eats nothing. He longs for death, but as a black man he
does not want to die “unequal, and despised.” Bigger wonders if
perhaps the whites are right that being black is the same as
being an animal of some sort. Nonetheless, the hope that another
way of life exists, one in which he would be able to forget his
racial differences, keeps coming back to him.  The authorities
drag Bigger to an inquest at the morgue. He senses from the
white people around him that they plan not only to put him to
death, but also to make him a symbol to terrorize and control
the black community. A feeling of rebellion rises in him and he
begins to come out