Try As They Might

Throughout humanity people have always been divided into different classes, from monarchies of kings and peasants to oligarchies of the elites ruling over the bottom rung. In Richard Wright’s novel Native Son, the effects of stratification on the poor working class are portrayed through Bigger Thomas, a poor young African American male. Throughout the history of the United States blacks have always been on the bottom rung of society, starting off as property to becoming people with limited freedoms. Through mutiny and revolts they paved the way to equality for all racial minorities. Through Bigger, Richard Wright portrays the effects of class stratification. He shows people being kept powerless, which causes the poor to be disconnected from other classes of society and lash out through revolts or through violence.

In order for most societies to work, there must be a class that is kept working for the continuation of a country, be it to run factories or build buildings people are needed to keep things flowing. In the American Society, the belief that hard work will pay off and will allow people to climb up the social ladder is a false belief. If the working class were non-existent, life as we know it would be impossible due to the disappearance of the work force. If the work force were to dissipate then the ability to run the daily tasks needed to run a society would not exist causing the destruction of that society. A great example of this is near the end of the novel when Bigger’s attorney, Mr. Max, tells Bigger why people are kept poor and kept needing. “If men stopped believing, stopped having faith, they’d come tumbling down. Men like you. Men kept hungry, kept needing, and those buildings kept growing and unfolding. You once told me you wanted to do a lot of things. Well, that’s the feeling that keeps those buildings in their places….” (Wright, 426). The men who were set aside continued to build for hope. The hope that one day, their children and their children’s children can grow up and continue the struggle to climb up the ranks and be something that they never could. The people who poured their blood, sweat and dreams into those buildings, will forever be apart of that ascension. If those people were not kept in a position where they needed to work, those buildings would not have been built. People would not have been able to live there. The hope of a new generation to carry on the dream, to carry on the fight to climb up the ladder to a better position in life would be lost. And the dream where it is not just the poor who work, but the entire community, both rich and poor working together for the betterment of the whole community and country would be as dry as a raisin in the sun.

The ideal of an entire community is similar to the Communist Manifesto in that these people who are oppressed are the modern working class; they are the Proletariats who live to work and work to live. “…the modern working class — the proletarians. In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.” (Marx and Engels, Part 1). The people who are exploited to work are commodities for the rich business owners. In Native Son, Bigger has to go work as a chauffer for a wealthy and powerful white man known as Mr. Dalton who owns a housing corporation that has the power to evict Bigger’s family from the housing. For people like Mr. Dalton (the Bourgeoisie), they need the Proletariats to do the physical labor to live off of the work they do and to stay rich. The Bourgeoisie weighs others down and the Proletariat continuing their life of work is for money. This is especially evident in Native Son due to the capitalist society America has stood upon for decades.

The American society is based upon capitalism, which founded on a free market that has a basis on profit. Although Mr. Dalton is a kind man who has the power to change the lives of the poor behind the Black Belt, (which he demonstrates by employing the poor and unemployed blacks), due to his wealth and position of the real estate company that owns the buildings of that area, he does nothing to aid the poor and decaying community from their plight. Instead of changing the way the real estate business is run to help the poor of the Black Belt, he follows the practice of only selling dirty, rat-infested, cramped, old and dilapidated apartments to the poor blacks and charging a greater amount for the apartments than to the richer whites. All of the events thus far reminded Bigger of a time when he was affected by such unfair treatment. “And he remembered the time when the police had come and driven him and his mother and his bother and sister out of a flat in a building which had collapsed two days after they had moved. And he had heard it said that black people, even though they could not get good jobs, paid twice as much rent as whites for the same kind of flats.” (Wright, 248). This shows the harsh position that the poor people of the Black Belt were forced to face. All because of the uncaring people with power deciding not to exercise the power they have for the betterment of humanity. This is shown in detail when Mr. Dalton is confronted with the poor conditions of his company’s housing of the Black Belt.

Despite all the things Mr. Dalton has done for the poor black community it is questionable as to why he does not help the poor with their strife of the housing conditions that are set before them. In fact his company requires the poor blacks to pay an exorbitant rate for horrible living conditions! As a result, Bigger’s attorney, Mr. Max, questions Mr. Dalton’s motives for not doing anything to help the poor community with their poor living conditions and the cost of living during the trial when Mr. Dalton was at the stand. “Why is it that you [Mr. Dalton] exact an exorbitant rent of eight dollars per week from the Thomas family for one unventilated, rat-infested room in which four people eat and sleep?” (Wright, 326) The conditions are quite unsatisfactory especially for the poor. Yet, the poor are forced into a corner and take what they can, despite the unreasonableness of it all. Despite Mr. Dalton’s position and power he does not aid the ailing community by renting out apartments that are not out of the Black Belt. This specifically limits the poor to the horrible conditions his company has left in the Black Belt and as thus the poor are continually mistreated.

Although Mr. Dalton claims to be helping the poor community with his amassed wealth he does not try to take them out of their predicament due to business purposes. Mr. Max confronts Mr. Dalton about this conundrum and receives a lame excuse in return. “Mr. Dalton, you give millions to help Negroes. May I ask why you don’t charge them less rent for fire-traps and check that against your charity budget?” “Well, to charge them less rent would be unethical.” “Unethical!” “Why, yes. I would be underselling my competitors.”(Wright, 328). It has become quite clear that Mr. Dalton will not rent out better apartments from white parts of the city to the poor because he would lose money from the rent. Mr. Dalton wants to keep them paying rent and to keep them being ripped off so that he can stay rich and allow society to continue on. It is quite apparent that Mr. Dalton is not out to help the poor black community in any tangible way, he wants them to be shut inside his mud box to keep his river of cash flowing. If he were to give the poor blacks better housing or cheaper housing, he would lose money and thus power. So he keeps the poor down in the hole by keeping them in old, dilapidating, rat-infested, “fire-traps” so that they are kept in a horrible position that is difficult to get out of.

Richard Wright’s novel demonstrates the problem of stratification and the outcome of an internal revolt and struggle through Bigger Thomas. Bigger’s revolt consisted of him accidentally smothering Mary to death. His great fear of Mary’s white blind mother finding out Bigger was in the same room as Mary gripped him to such an extent that he killed her. To keep people from finding her corpse, Bigger tossed her body into a furnace concealing his evidence. When people discovered Mary’s corpse no one suspected it was Bigger’s doing (how could a black man be smart enough to get away with a murder for so long?) until he bursted out of the room, solidifying his guilt. Countless blacks must have felt the way Bigger felt and expressed their feelings through violence, such as killing their white suppressers, or even lashing out unto friends because of the stress caused by hatred and fear of stratification.

However, there were some leaders were able to channel the rage of others into something constructive. Much like a needle leading thread to patch up a tear in a quilt, those brave souls managed to bind America together as one. One such “needle” was Martin Luther King Jr. who helped arrange the “March on Washington,” a revolt where not only blacks but ethnicities from all over the country gathered together at Lincoln Memorial and demanded rights and equality. The people gathered at Lincoln Memorial demanded, “an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King_Jr.). The people demanded these rights because of the years of stratification that they have been through which finally had been released through this revolt. Much like Bigger’s rebellion, these people grew tired of being put down and being treated like second class citizens. And so they decided to fight and revolt against the powers who kept them down.

Wright shows the stratification of society through the experiences of Bigger Thomas and through the idea that people are kept down and forced to work hard jobs everyday to ensure that society continues to function normally. Not everyone can be rich and be on a permanent vacation; society needs workers, grunts and peons and one way to attain this is to keep people down by hiring people at low rates so companies can take advantage of them and exploit their cheapness to build up power, which is what Mr. Max implies when Bigger realizes his doomed fate of death. “They hire people and they don’t pay them enough; they take what people own and build up power. They rule and regulate life. They have things arranged so that they can do those things and the people can’t fight back. …they say that all people who work are inferior. And the rich people don’t want to change things; they’ll lose too much.” (Wright, 428). The way this society is stacked may be cruel to the masses, forcing many to remain in poverty and oppressed. Yet, can the individual rise through the ashes and soar through the clouds like the man known as “Green” who was taken in and employed by the Daltons from the streets and managed to gain a job with the government? Can an individual break the chains of society and be the one who is rich with servants?