Social Demarcation and the Forms of Psychological Fracture in Book One of Richard Wright's Native Son

Abstract

Douglass vividly represents the diabolical psychological manipulation of the slaves by the white masters, but he also shows the figures in his work to be so psychologically damaged by the unnatural and unholy master /slave relationship that the owner in such relationships frequently turns bestial or cruel - even while maintaining a veneer of civility - while the slave obviously suffers a depleted sense of worth and identity; dehumanization is the consequence common to both. The tension among the roles he adopts - the neighborhood tough who intimidates with false bravado; the submissive Negro speaking in affected dialect in the presence of whites; and the identity foisted upon him by a paranoid white society, what Angela Davis calls "the myth of the Black rapist" (qtd. by Guttman 170) - and his ostensibly real internal self, which is a nebulous complex of turbulent fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, complicate Bigger 's ability to establish any stable identity.