Bigger's character is nearly impossible to judge, from whether or not I even like him, to whether he deserved his punishment. He does many actions that are neither inherently good or bad, such as holding the rat in front of his sister's face, and it seems his reaction sets the tone for how "bad" it is. The entire book I feel like I'm on the jury determining Bigger's fate. In a sense he deserves his punishment, he did rape and intentionally kill someone, but not the person he's on trial for.
Wright does a great job of creating a character that is hard to decide how to feel for one way or another. I can't help but think that the courtroom scene works as a metaphor for the book as a whole, with the statements by Buckley and Max arguing for their polarized views about Bigger and civil rights as a whole. The way he creates Bigger's character inherently created polarized reactions to him, from empathy, to being called "a small-time negro Hitler." While he disagreed with many of the reactions to his book, the fact that his character was so controversial opened up the opportunity for discussion about Bigger and the greater civil rights movement as a whole.
I like the idea of Buckley and Max arguing for different poles of literary interpretation here--anticipating various reader responses to the challenging character and situation Wright has constructed. And it's true that Rascoe, in particular, DOES really echo Buckley's arguments pretty closely.
ReplyDeleteBut do you think the novel really gives them equal treatment? Is Buckley's argument as valid or well developed as Max's? Max's "reading" is born out in the details of the narrative itself, whereas the reader knows that Buckley gets all kinds of details completely wrong (he sees it unambiguously as a crime of lust, with the murder as an attempt only to conceal the original crime. We know this isn't the case). Buckley relies heavily on bigotry and racial stereotypes, and his argument is crafted to appeal to racists especially. So maybe that says a lot about the reader who identifies with him!