Memoire Online - Existentialism in Richard Wright's Native Son and The Outsider

1 express my gratitude to aIl those who guided me through this modest exploration of Richard Wright and his existentialism.

1 owe particular thanks to my supervisor Dr René AHOUANSOU whose advice and support made the completion of this essay possible.

1 would like to acknowledge the timely and valuable assistance ofProfessor Luc FANOU.

My greatest debt however is to 'aIl my prof essors of the English Department for the quality of their teaching which sharpened my skiIls.

1 cannot forget to express special regards to my parents and relatives for their love and support.

INTRODUCTION"''''''''''''''' "'''''''''' """""''''''''''''' PART ONE THE BASIC ELEMENTS OF EXISTENTIALISM	'"'''''''''''''''''''' -i,	. .~
CHAPTER 1 HISTO RI CAL EVOLUTION		7
1 1- THE PRECURSORS		7
1 2- THE MODERN EXISTENTIALISTS		10
CH APTE R II E XI STE NTIAL PRIN C IPL ES	..:	16
II 1- ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE		16	II 2- THE BASIC TENETS
	19
PART TWO RICHARD WRIGHT'S iLLUSTRATION OF EXISTENTIALISM .-c		-- --~
CHAPTE R III NATIVE SON		29
III 1- BIGGER THOMAS'S HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT		30
III 2- BIGGER THOMAS'S EMANCIPATION ."'"''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 38
III 3..BIGGER THOMAS'S REJECTION OF RELIGION		46
CHAPTER IV THE 0 UTS ID ER '''''''		53
IV 1- CROSS DAMON'S DREADFUL LIFE		54
IV 2- CROSS DAMON'S NEW EXISTENCE .."'"''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' 56
IV 3- CROSS DAMON'S DENIAL OF IDEOLOGY		63
PART THRE.E ASSESSMENT OF RICHARD WRIGHT'S EXISTENTlALISM;s:'
CHAPTER V A CRITICAL STUDY OF WRIGHT'S HEROES		68

INTRODUCTION

Richard Wright's literary achievement is exceptionally great. The black writer prepared and nourished the ground for the fiction of social protest. More than any writer of his period, he helps in inserting a great consciousness in Blacks

significance, he becfmes for many Negroes a symbol fot the spontaneous creative impulses of the race. Ris novels are outstanding examples in the fiction of social protest : they establish the black artist's reputation in America and other countries. Ris works belong to the Afro -American hJ!l1 1anistic tradition which includes a search for freedom, truth, beauty, peace, human dignity, and social justice.

When we considèr the writer's special contribution to American literature, we remember the stories in his main books: Native Son, Black Boy, The Outsider. They have a high quality of revelation and reflect the writer's persistent attempt to explore the actual inner life of Negroes. At the same time, Wright exposès the

social, educational, and economi'è):t:estrictions as an attempt to show the objective reality of the American society. Wright's works constitute his own assault upon society. The stories in his books are a brutal, startling, and undisguised comment not on life, but on a way of having to live and being forced to live in ignorance,

fear and shame. The writer is thus preoccupied with the heroes who violently hurl themselves against the walls that bar them from a life, they know is a better life. The structure oftheir personality, the pattern oftheir emotions and. the type oftheir dreams are the measures of the author's honesty and his self-knowledge as a man. Re performs his dut y as a committed black intellectual whose main mission is to

Richard Wright is an example of black boy born to poor parents. Re has a great potential for genius - but lives under the circumstances of a racially divided and poverty-stricken Southland. Ris personality suffers great trauma in his earliest and most formative years. The negative elements of 1 neurotic family and broken

home in which there is religious fanaticism and cruelty are mixed together to make out his fiction. The misery of his youth and his early political commitment provides him with a need for efficiency, and motivatef him to raise problems, sugges~ew possibilities and solutions. His life is dominated by a set of ideas and philosophies that he personally embraces and then weaves into his writing. Of great importance is the inclusion of existentialism in his body of ideas. He seriously read Kierkegaard and studied Nietzsche. Wright further adventures into the works of existentialist philosophers like Martin Heidegger and JeaJ-Paul Sartre. Wright is obsessed with the psychology of oppressed people and the

creative depths of the unconscious mind. He always reads philosoph~ from. the materialist point of view and he accepts Marxist theories of history, economics, politics, and social class analysis. Nonetheless, Wright is in the realistic tradition of Fyodor Dostoïevsky; he constantly tries to represent reality so intensely that characters, situations, actions appear to transcend reality. His intellectual journey moves from southern black expression of Christianity to dialectical materialism

We need to understand this intellectual journey and how it relates to aIl Wright's works as a novelist of ideas. Wright's existentialism does not, as many believe, begin in Paris. It develops as a result of his experiences : he turns against'X

orthodox religion at an early age because of the religious fanaticism in his family/ \, He grows up in a South where lynching, Jim Crow, and every egregious form of racism are rampant, where the fate of a black boy is not only tenuous or nebulous,

but often one of doom. Living poor and black in a hostile white world gives him his first knowledge of the human condition. He is deeply marked by the existentialist vision of life he encountered in his childhood and adolescence, which is compounded by painful poverty, the cruel religious fanaticism of his maternaI family, and the frustration of a broken family. That is why, the existentialist issue

Richard Wright is known to be one of the first Afro-American writers to have dealt with existentialism in his fiction.

ln this respect, his novels Native Son and The Outsider attain a tremendous accuracy in the aim of showing his existentialism. The author depicts his protagonists Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon as the historical rebel and the metaphysical rebel. Wright's philosophy is that fundamentaIly, aIl men are potentially evil. Every man is capable of murder or violence and has a natural propensity for evil. Evil in nature and man are the same; nature is ambivalent, and man may be naturally perverse and quixotic as nature. Human nature and human society are determinants and, being what he is, man is merely a pawn caught between the worlds of necessity and freedom. He is alone against the odds of Nature, Chance, Fate, and the vicissitudes of life. AlI that he has to use in his defence and the direction of his existence are his reason and his will. By the

As aIl great writers ,Wright's life and work has been examined by each generation of students. But we become aware of the fact that an important theme like Existentialism in Richard Wright's Works has never been fully debated at the English Department. ln our investigations we unfortunately notice that few are the students who have found Wright's existentialism as a large topic and devoted an entire development to it. They have been interested in other themes such as racism, crime, violence, environment and personality in Wright's works. That is why, for the purpose of our memoir, we have chosen to work on su ch a topic.

The purpose of our work is two-fold : to define Richard Wright's existentialism, and to show the correlation between the man and his work. As this

study is based on Native Son and The Outsider,_we will try to point out some of the

existentialist characteristics displayed by the heroes in these two novels and evaluate the effectiveness of their struggle. ln view of what has been said above, it is clear that the study will use the methodology of descriptive research since it goes through different data related to Wright's fiction, and aims at showing his

existentialist views. The study will help us to examine Wright's existentialism in order to stress the way it is ambivalent.

Our work is divided into three parts. The first part will be an account of the basic elements of existentialism, and it highlights the historical evolution and the existential principles. The second part includes an analysis of Richard Wright's existentialist novels, and it focuses on Native Son and The Outsider. The third part deals with the assessment of Wright's existentialism.

Existentialism is a term applied to a group of attitudes current in philosophical, religious, artistic thought during and after W orld War 2, which emphasises existence rather than essence. ln its modem expression, existentialism had its beginnings in the writings of the nineteenth-century Danish theologian, Soren Kierkegaard. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger is important in its formulation, and the French essayist Jean-Paul Sartre has done most to give it its present form and popularity.

Soren Aabye Kierkegaard was born at Copenhagen on 5th May 1813, into a family of 7 children. Young Soren has been raised in an atmosphere of austere

rigid Protestantism during aH his childhood. Without being familiarised with religion, without any former preparation, the young boy is directly introduced to the harsh and authentic Christianism exemplified by the image of Christ dying on the cross for our sins.

his studies at the Faculty of Theblogy in Copenhagen university. ln October 1843, the Danish theologian published Fear and Tremblement in which he spoke of Abraham and

question of sin appeared under the title The Concept of Dread. Until his death in 1855, he put down many other notes and philosophical reflections in his diary Papirer.

ln term of ontology or the branch of philosophy dealing with Being, the precursor of existentialism defined man as a "synthesis of soul and body led by the spirit" 1

"Man is spirit. But what is the spirit? The spirit is the self. What is the self? The self is the relation to oneself or the possibility of that relationship to refer to

ln that vision, man is a being-in-relation and not a static substrate. Ruman existence is therefore a synthesis of aH these factors making man's nature.

Existence is a perpetuaI relationship developed by the combinations spirit-soulbody, temporal-etemal, liberty-necessity. To say if more c1 early, man is nothing but his actions.

The immediate consequence of Kierkegaardian ontology is the personal commitment of the existing individu al in the hum an situation. Its significant is fact that we and things "În general exist, but these things have no meaning for us except when we create meaning through acting upon them. The existentialist's

point of departure is the immediate sense of awareness that human beings have of their situation; a part of this awareness is the sense they have of the absurdity

contradiction produces in them a discomfort, an anxiety in the face of human limitations and a desire to invest experience with meaning by acting upon the world, although efforts to act in a meaningless, "absurd" world lead to anguish,

Criticising Hegelian rationalism, the Danish theologian sees the inadequacy of human reason to explain the enigma of the universe as the basic philosophical question. He finds ultimate solution in faith : only a transcendental Being can help us bear the absurdity of the world. He has hope and faith because he believes in this ultimate Being as God, Love, Oneness of immortal Mind, and infinite Spirit. By a leap of faith he finds ultimate communion and existence in God, and this sustains him. Kierkegaard' s ideas can be summed up through Tertullien's words: Credo quia abs 'urduml.

But during the last half of the nineteenth century, the German philosopher Friedriech Nietzsche substituting the traditional theocentrism for a courageous anthropocentrism has prodaimed the death of God. He used the term "nihilism" to designate the morbid crisis falling upon the modem world: the collapse of

values or decadence. As the existence tums out to be worthless because of the nothingness of old values, it is up to man to innovate and change those values. Man's ability to "transvaluate" lays in his awareness of the nothingness of old values. As a matter of fact, Nietzsche daims that man is set free from God' s domination -gods do not exist, or even if they exist, they do not care for man's situation. God is an illusion of the mind. Therefore, there is no reason to fear a dead God and restrain one's actions and freedom. The Nietzschean prototype of is the Superman.

"Superior men, that God is your greatest danger. You have been resurrected since he is left dead in his grave.

It is now time for the great hour. It is now time for the superior man to become the master (u.). God is dead :it

called Will to power (Wille zur macht) .That Will to power is to be educated and sustained by severe exigencies. Indeed, human existence is a

idealism as mere imagination, a world of fiction which corresponds to our desire. The Will to power cannot stand any idealism.

The point of existentialism in Nietzchean philosophy is his calI for man to create values and invent his way layout good and bad.

1-2 THE MODERN EXISTENTIALISTS

ln theearly twentieth century, aIl those pre-existential reflections will be formulated into a system by another German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The latter was born on 26th September 1889 at Messkirch, a small rural city in Badeland. By 1909 he passed his Abitur (GCE examination) and registered for The Faculty of Theology at Fribourg University. Four semesters later, he decides to leave theological studies for philosophy in which he gets a PhD degree. After the first W orld War burst out in 1914, Martin Heidegger was

appointed as Privatdozent (Assistant professor) at Fribourg University; during autumn 1916, he has worked under the authority of the famous phenomenologist Edmund Husserl who will be his mentor and godfather his life long.

By February 1927, the disciple of Husserl has published his main work Being and Time (Sein und zeit) in which he paves a new way for the transcendental study of subjectivity. ln that treatise, he uses Husserl's phenomenology to speculate in ontology and answer the fundamental questions

:" what is the being in general? What is it possible to know about the being?" As can be seen, the main point in the Heideggerian system is the question of being (die Seinsfrage). To that question Heidegger answers that "time is the truth of the

being". To put it more clearly, man is a being who exists in time, a temporal being who is perpetually "a presence".

Martin Heidegger's "interpretation of the time as horizon of any comprehension of the being" 1 has opened the door to the doctrine of existentialism in 1927. For the existentialist thinker, man is a being-in-the-world (in-der-welt-sein) whose existence is a proj ect, a being who can invent himself at any time of worry. Though we do not sense it because of common habit, we usually invent ourselves when we ~e worried in front of difficult situations and think out to tind a solution. It is within that little instant (der Augenblick) that man frees himself from his world and discovers new avenues for his actions.

With su ch a freedom, man cannot remain as a mere subject in History, but he can create his own history.

T 0 round off, Martin Heidegger is the tirst philosopher who has tried a metaphysical approach of existentialism. The description he made of human

existence is aIl the more pessimistic since he reveals to man the factitious and derelict nature of the world as it i~. It is up to man to create values out of that

chaos. His detinition of man in early 1927: "the essence of the being lies in his existence" announces the existentialleitmotiv: " existence precedes essence".

AlI the philosophies of existence trying to put the stress on the unyielding nature of hum an existence will have special echo during the Second W orld War period. When the war ended in May 1945, following the capitulation of the German army, we are still very far from the great euphoria which has marked the end of the first World War in November 1918. The main reason is that the

loss is also considerable: fifty-fiv~ million dead (55 million) for one hundred million 'wounded (100 million);' the European economy is finally ruined. Moreover, the events which have followed the end of the War, in that year 1945, bring much more trouble than comfort, mainly the discovery of concentration camps with their concerted system of extermination by the Nazis. The explosion of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, even if it marks the last step of the W ar, will open the new age of apocalyptic destruction, and engage humanity in a collective suicide. The division of the world initiated by Joseph Stalin, Theodore

Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill at Yalta in 1945, creates not the conditions of a lasting peace but rather opens the era of cold war. As Jean-Paul Sartre said it: "The war has ended in indifference and anguish ( .... ) Peace has not started yet" Henceforth, images of "night and despair" will haunt minds, so that a certain conception of man, familiar to the humanist tradition, drops before such revelations. The War period is one of chaos and pessimism, and the collapse of

Even before the term existentialism has been broadly used, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre has started his satire of contemporary optimism. Playwright and essayist who bases his literary work on a philosophical thought influenced by German phenomenologists like Karl Ja~pers, he makes remarkable beginnings with Nausea (1938) and a collection of short- stories The Wall

(1939) ; those two works which are excellent testimonies about the anguish of the pre-war periods, show some Sartrian metaphysi&al themes : the feeling that

everything becomes absurd in the light of death, the impression of gratuit y in front of events, the denunciation of "bad faith" in the people who try to justify their existence by reassuring values, fear of a humanism which believes in the univers al man and not in the man in situation. As a consequence, the tendency of laying the stress on absolute values in literature has changed for a humanism

based on man's responsibility and commitment into History. It is not necessary to ask whether History has a meaning and if we can participate in it; but as we

are already living in the world, we must try to give it a meaning by doing our best and struggle for it. The existentialist writers want to favour the historical

Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea is a kind of metaphysical novel whose main theme is that life means nothing if you don't have a goal to achieve. Written in the form of a diary kept by Antoine Roquentin, it narrates the story of a man who is preparing a historical book on the eighteenth-century politician M.de

Rollebon. From time to time, Antoine Roquentin gets the sudden feeling of gratuit y and absurdity of life, so he names that crisis Nausea. He progressively discovers that the Nausea is a real metaphysical anguish caused by the fact that everything that exists is irreducible to reason. ln the same vision, Albert Camus has pub lished his novel The Strânger in 1942 and his treatise The myth of Sisyphus in 1943 which are two images of negation and absurdity. ln the first work, the hero MeursauIt is a modest clerk who denounces social conformism

(he is curiously indifferent to beings and things), discovers the absurd and engages himself into a modem tragedy, aIl developed in a neutral and objective tone. As far as The Myth of Sisyphus is concemed, Camus precises that the notion of the absurd must not be a simple observation, but a tension and a refusaI like the revoIt of the Greek king SisXPhus condemned to roll

continuously a rock up to the hill. Camus' conception of the absurd is the opposition or the perpetuaI tension between human need of order and reason,

and the spectacle of disorder and injustice offered lry the world. ln his Caligula

(1944) where the absurd becomes a raving anguish before the misfortune of humanity, the mad emperor changed into a god will declare: "It is impossible to understand destiny, that is why I decide to be a destiny."

AlI those works render a new sound: the expression of despair is too pathetic, the loneliness of the hero is too absolute, they don't take part in society which they denounce as absurdo Roquentin in The Nausea, the madman in The Wall, Meursault and his mythic double Sisyphus, Caligula will never be fully integrated into socjety. They stress the necessity for each man to invent his way and create himself his existence. Duties, laws external to man, and any other maxim forced upon him lead to the enslavement of the individual. F ollowing that tradition, Simone de Beauvoirpublished her first novel The Guest in 1943, another metaphysical novel whicho dramatises in an existential way the problem of individual communication: the heroine Françoise kills her guest Xavière out of jealousy. ln the same year , her friend Jean-Paul Sartre expands the doctrine

of existentialism in a voluminous philosophical work Being and Nothingness : man, born out of nothing, can't find any value that provides him a goal to be achieved; he is an existence and has no essence a priori; but instead of finding despair in that nothingness, he must rather be aware of his freedom and the importance of his acts which, once accomplished, will definitely define him.

By 1 945's existentialism chânges its first face of despair and negation of univers al values to become a doctrine open to hope and expectation. During a

conference he held in 1945, Sartre announces that "existentialism is a humanism". With its second face, existentialism turns on man's effort to create

positive values in society, and therefore appears as the "hope of the desperate". The Plague by Albert Camus and the trilogy Strides Toward Freedom by Jean Paul Sartre try to express through allegorical forms the new humanism which refuses to shrink before historical catastrophes.

Issued from Kierkegaard's meditations in the nineteenth century, existentialism has found art and literature to be unusually effective methods of expression. ln the novels and plays by Franz Kafka, Fyodor Dostoïevski, Albert Camus, Simone de

Beauvoir, Samuel Becket, Jean-Paul Sartre to name but a few, it has found the most persuasiye media.

To have a clear idea of existentialist literature, which is the broad topic of our research paper, it will be helpful to look for the main tenets or principles characterising the doctrine of existentialism.

EtymologicaIly, existentialism is derived from the adjective "existential" (derived itself from the substantive "existence") to which is added the suffix "ism". That very suffix "ism" generally indicates the primacy of the preceding morpheme: individualism gives priority to the individual; and socialism gives priority to society. Therefore, existentialism appears as a doctrine giving priority to existence. But what is existence? It is difficult to give a precise answer, for existence is not an attribute but the reality of aIl attributes : l am not

taIl, blond, smoker and existing; bût l am taIl, blond, smoker only if l exist. We can grasp existence in the existing' individual not in the existence itself. Indeed, existence is not a state of being, it is an act; the passage from possibility to reality : to exist is to move from what it is (ex) and to reach (sistere) what is

possible. A concrete image of the existence is available in Sartre's Nausea (pages 165, 166) where the hero Roquentin expresses some reflections on the

There are a number of guiding principles common to the doctrine of existentialism.

presence III the world. Some people believe that essence cornes first and existence cornes afterward... That classical conception originates from the

religious tradition that God created man. Before creating man, God must have an idea of the kind of being He wants to create : the essence first, then the

existence. They believe that there is an essence common to every man, which is called human nature; that essence determines man' s action. As the Greek philosopher Plato said it in Phedon, the essences are the sources of the beings; they preexist to the apparition of all the beings in the world, so existence is the imitation of the original essence. ln that perspective, man is submitted to a strict

determinism. For the doctrine of existentialism, however, existence precedes essence, and essence will never join existence except in death. If we take for example the object we make or manufacture, their conception precedes their realisation. The artisan is inspired by the concept of basket in order to make it;

no artisan can produce a basket without representing in his mind the image of a basket, without referring to it. So the essence (here the image of basket) precedes the existence (the basket itself). But there is a being in which the

existence precedes the essence, a being which exists before any concept: man. At the outset, man is nothing; there is no human nature since there no God to conceive it. You cannot de fine man at first; it is only through his actions that you know the type of man he is. Man exists at first, arises, is found in the world,

and is defined afterward. Man is nothing more than what he does or makes of himself. ln human beings and only in hum an beings, existence precedes essence. Therefore, existence is the privilege of man and not of the other beings.

Secondly, man chooses his essence. Not having distinguished the univers al essence that makes man in gèneral from the individual essence that

makes a particular man (shy or daring, upright or dishonest), the doctrine of existentialism concludes that man must create himself his own essence. It is true that 1 am a man, but which type of man do 1 want to become? Even if 1 cannot choose a priori my social class, my height and my intelligence, the attitude 1

adopt in front of these contingencies depends on me. "Each man decides of the sense of his life, it is he who takeshis conditions up to success or failure" 1. l can be a disabled person from birth, but my infirmity goes with the way l bear it: as

"intolerable", "humiliating", "to be concealed", "to be disclosed to everyone", "a reason of my pride", "a justification of my failures" etc. The attitude l adopt vis

à-vis my conditions contributes to transform myself. l can be ugly or handsome, poor or rich, these are factual data against which l have no power; however l can accept or reject these essences. Life can have meaning and purpose if the individual so will it by his own reason and determination. It is then clear that

Many people identifying themselves with public opinion or using equally weIl the French pronoun "on" ("man" as Heidegger said in German) don't have an authentic existence. For Sartre, Karl Jaspers and Heidegger, the person who exists authenticaIly is the one who makes a free choice, who can realise himself, who is his own creation. "1 want to count only on myself' said Daniel in Sartre's

~ut it is not sufficient to have made a choice is not aIl. Once your choice is made, you must not contend with it and stay still. The existing individual who stabilises himself on the type of man he wants to become hardens and ceases to exist. It is not possible to fix oneself~on a definite position, for existence is a

constant transcendance and a continuaI overcoming. To exist is to choose to be more than you are. It is important to observe that man is the only being who is able to choose; the other beings are predetermined. For example, the seed preexists to the tree, and aIl the transformations a tree ~will undergo through seasons are predictable. On the contrary, man can choose out of many facing possibilities a particular when situation. It is only after his choice that you know what he has

reaIly chosen and what the choice has made of him. The only way l have to choose my essence is to adopt one particular attitude instead of another in front

of a situation. It is a choice which concems my own life and the life of the whole
community altogether. Man constructs the univers al by choosing his essence and

the ^~ThirdY,_usual^man_detinition^is of the ^condemned_word.^to_First^be_of^ITee._aIl,^That there is ^unlimited no authority ^ITeedom_imposing^surpasses a code of behaviour on man. For example in The Flies by J-P Sartre (Act III,

scene II) Orest retorts to Jupiter who is asking from him obedience: "...You should not have created me free ( .. ) No sooner have you created me than l have

again : l' m submitted to no law but mine ( ... ) For l am a man, Jupiter, and each man has to invent his way". The ways of man depend on his goals and his hierarchy of values. Since our goals command our choices, the free choice of

our goals leads to the liberty of our particular resolutions. That freedom is aIl the more safeguarded as our goals are never detinitely achieved. ln so far as we continue to exist, we keep on choosing our goals, for freedom is the essence of our existence. ln the face of any occasion of choice we can calI in question our

previous choice, so that any decision taken in conformity with it can be considered as a renewal of that choice.

How are we going to choose our goals or aims? To choose between honour and pleasure, between my interest and the interest of others, l need to

make a discemment with a guiding principle. The Epicurean philosopher who centres the goal of his life on pleasure, the altruisY who sees no other reason for

living except devoting himself to his fellowmen, like the Christian who seeks nothing more than the" glory of God" pretend to link their moral system to an imposing principle which has nothing with a personal free choice. Anyhow, even if the principle of discemment is motivated, the existentialists are not

stopped by that perspective. Having rejected essences and similar concepts, they logically corne to the conclusion that even the motive of our action is

independent. Man adopts a particular attitude with no good reason, he makes himself "without any point of support" 1; he goes by no reason. Each person sets freely his norms of God, Evil and Beauty. René Descartes had attributed that

power to God, but Sartre and the existentialists give it to man. "By attributing the free will to God, Descartes has given God what is man's prerogative", he

argued. That absolute liberty which invents Reason and Good and has no other limits than itself is assumed by man. But it is important to notice that the deep choice which determines our daily decisions makes one thing with the consciousness we have of ourselves. Moreover, that liberty is not the privilege of my wilful actions alone. My emotions and my passions are also independent. There is no privileged phenomenon as far as my liberty is concemed. For example, my fear is independent and it proves my freedom, for 1 have put all my liberty in my fear and 1 have chosen to be fearful in such and such situations. Therefore, everything in our psychological or interior life is liberty. To act freely is to decide without any motive, but to set the motives as the goal or project of our actions. That project is neither in Heaven nor on Earth but it is man himself because he lives subjectively his project subjectively and is the unique person who is able to know about it. If we consider the structure "motive-intention-actgoal", the free will act is an absurd act. It is absurd because it is not motivated, it

The absence of determinism justifies that man is totally free. He has behind and before him no values, no justification or no excuse; he is alone and

condemned to be independent. He must search for ways and means to survive in a hostile world where nothing is controlled. That is to say, man's existence is the constant exercise of his freedom, the perpetuaI effort to surpass his situation.

Man is always in a "suspended sentence" and his survival depends on his efforts to face it. By a personal decision man can reject his past, reinvent and reorient

his life. ln other words, man is what he will be, he is not what he is; his actuality is provisory value to be surpassed;'

Fourthly, man is responsible for his actions. The existentialist's responsibility extends further than his actions, he is responsible for every action happening in the world. Nothing escapes his responsibility, neither his personal actions nor the events exterior to him. For example, as a man l' m responsible

for W orld War II even if l have not caused it. l' m responsible for everything in the sense that by posing free acts, l assume the responsibility for everything happening in the world. l have not asked my parents to give me birth, but the attitude l adopt vis-à-vis my birth (shame or pride, optimism or pessimism...) shows that l have chosen to be bom in a certain sense. For example, through his lamentations on the dunghill: "why haven't l died in my mother's womb"\ Job chooses to be bom because if he had not been bom he couldn't have moaned and

damned his birthday. Likewise, l cannot regret the war massacres if they have not happened, but by regretting them l have taken them as a part of my existence and assumed them. What happens to man or his fellowmen is surely human. No situation is inhuman in so far as the most horrible situation, the worst torments never create inhuman situation. It is only by fear, flight and other extreme

The responsibility that the doctrine of existentialism wants man to assume extends the common signification of the word. Ordinarily, we are responsible

the existentialist perspective, there is nothing of the sort: even if we do not willingly decide an action, we are responsible for it. That responsibility is inexplicable, wantonly, and absurdo The univers al character ofthat responsibility is contained in the fact that man's actions surpass him and belong to the whole humanity. That is why we are always happy whenever any man accomplishes a famous progress for humanity; we feel the same satisfaction like the author's. ln

the same way, when somebody does wrong we usually condemn the wrongdoer
and his social class at the same time; we are also deeply affected when we hear

about genocide, massive killings, certain abominations. It is important to notice that the responsible man is the one who is invested with a mission; he discharges it and considers it as an image of rus ITee-will. It is in that sense that we

understand someone who is engaged in a war and lives up to his decision despite the critics of other people. He deserves it because he could have shrunken back

by committing suicide or deserting but, instead, he has chosen that war and decided for its existence.

Fifthly, man is anguished by his existence. That anguish results ITom the immediate sense of meaninglessness that human beings have of their situation. Indeed, the existing individual chooses his own norms without a prior judgement of value. He is worried about his choice since it engages the whole world.

he assumes the responsibility of the entire human race, since there is neither value nor moral given us a priori and for each choice we must decide al one without any support or guide, why can't we feel anxious about our

the world and the place of man in the universe.(...) why can't we be seized by fear in ITont of such an entire

How can we justify the existentialist hypothesis of anguish? Despite our good will, we cannot find satisfying answer to that question. Previously to our

choice, there is neither authority .imposing upon us a choice nor a range of values offered for our choice. "1 could do what 1 wanted. Nobody has the right to

advise me, there is no Good, no Evil, except the ones that 1 invent myself.", protested Mathieu Delarue in The Age of Reason. ln these conditions, why shall

1 fear to make the wrong choice? Indeed, there is no justification of the existentialist anguish. Our effort to discover the real cause of this "feeling of

anguish" is vain: that anguish is absurd and lays on nothing like the feeling of responsibility itself. This anguish is absurd for the simple reason that the world

Sixthly, man engages himself through his actions. Engagement shows man's commitment into the world : once he takes a decision, he makes it his

own, and struggles for it. The existentialist tenet of engagement is opposed to the attitude of immobilism, which requires man to accept his situation with indifference. The existentialist approach of engagement goes beyond the common engagement in politics or religion. ln the passive sense, engagement is the fact of being engaged and inserted into a system on which one is dependent. For example, due to my birth l' m engaged into the world. ln the active sense, engagement expresses the act of choosing a situation that pleases us. For

example, due to my birth l' m engaged into the world (the first type of engagement) but 1 realise the second type of engagement by choosing to serve

the army or any other cause. ln the real use',()f the word, both meanings go together. We are passively engaged in the world, and because of that first

engagement we actively engage ourselves vis-à vis the situations in the world. It is no use wondering why we must commit ourselves to a particular action, provided that the engagement goes with a free-will and is destined for the wellbeing of mankind. Nothing greater is achieved, without a higher degree of engagement.

Seventhly, the feeling of absurdity is centred on the existentialist vision of the world. Life, is life worth living? That fundamental question arises from the "nausea" put into man by the medianical structure of the existence: "waking up,

4 hours at office, meal, sleeping and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Saturday on the same rhythm... One day cornes when we ask "why" and everything starts out of that weariness" 1 The discovery of the absurd also arises

from the queemess of the world, the hostility of nature in which we feel strangers. Even our reason, acknowledging its incapacity to understand the world, tells us that the world is absurd and irrational. The absurd may also arise from the fact that each day of our life is stupidly dependent on the following

one, whereas time is our worst enemy. At last, it is the certitude of death , that elementary and definite side of huinan adventure in the world which inspires us the absurdity of living. The real is absurd and has no meaning for itself, that is why each one gives it the meaning he wants. As a matter of fact, it is not the world itself which is absurd but it is the comparison of its irrational nature with

man's desire of clarity. The absurd is neither in man nor in the world, but in their common presence or antagonism.

Since the drama of absurdity makes one with human existence, any solution for that problem must preserve the notion of absurdo That is why, the doctrine of existentialism challenges aIl the solutions skipping the absurdity of the world, mainly suicide and religion. ln fact, committing suicide is an easy way to suppress the consciousness of the absurd, and religion places outside the

world the hopes and expectations that would give sense to life. On the contrary, the existentialists want man to live only with what he knows that is the

existentialist faces the world and challenges the absurdity of his situation: he accepts his destiny entirely. For Albert Camus, the prototype of the absurd man is Sisyphus : the gods have condemned him to roll a rock up to a mountain top

from where the heavy stone will fall down again; by being aware of the vanity of his efforts, Sisyphus rises above his punishment; by accepting his destiny

Sisyphus bases his grandeur on the struggle. The absurd hero is happy. As can be seen, the awareness of the absurd leads to independence.

Eighthly, the doctrine of existentialism is a humanism . Criticising the traditional form of humanism which takes man as purpose and absolute value,

the existentialists oppose a humanism based on hum an dignity. ln that vision, man is concemed with the farthest events as well as the nearest ones, the

individual actions as well as collective dramas for he is entirely responsible for the whole world. He has the heavy responsibility to realise a more hum an

uni verse. That humanism is built on the notion that man is the only being capable of altruism, of pure love above the restrictive sphere of instinctive, familial, and sexual affection. The existential view can assert the possibility of improvement. Most pessimistic systems find the source of their despair in the

fixed imperfections of human nature or the human context; the existentialist, however, denies all absolute principles and holds that human nature is fixed only in that we have agreed to recognise certain human attributes; it is therefore subject to change if human beings can hope for aid in making such alterations only from within themselves. Man is the future of man.

It is no longer possible to c(~mceive humanity as a great being into which the plurality of individuals would be melted and be restored, because the transhistorical dimension of man enables him to mark the existence with his imprints. The existentialist humanism will be realised only when each man becomes conscious that his existence depends on himself and on the others.

"Each one is al one and nobody can go without the others, there is no common life which releases us of the burden of ourselves and spares us to have an opinion. And there is no interior life which

ln The Plague by Albert Camus, the characters learn the necessity of solidarity in the face of a common epidemic. The novel shows that man can't

survive alone and that his destiny is linked to the others. Since he admits that life is absurd and unjust, it's up to him to give it a meaning and create a little justice: "what balances the absurd is the community of men struggling against it" said Camus in 1945.

Ninthly, the atheistic existentialists do not conceive any God transcending human existence. Their main argument is the contradicting notion of a Being which exists by itself or causa sui: to build Its own existence, He must have existed before , which is obviously contradictory. Moreover, there is a rilv~ between the existence of God and that of man: the existence of one excludes the existence of the other, and vice versa. If God exists, man is not free; but it is in the essence of man to be free, therefore God does not exists. Subsequently, the existing individual takes the place of the presumed God for he is the only creator

of values in the uni verse. "Since 1 suppress God the Father, there must be somebody to invent the values ..." observed Sartre. The non-existence of God is the logical consequence of the existence of man; - which reminds us of Nietzsche's "God is dead"

The negation of the existence of God leads to a radical individualism. However, the doctrine of existentialism does not kill God in the way of vulgar atheists : they do not reject God for the pleasure of it. They evacuate God from the world just to let man takes the responsibility for his destiny. ln other words,

if the belief in God is to threaten man's freedom, He cannot exist; if the existence of God must be prior to the existence of man, He cannot exist. Their

Creator. Having rejected the existence of God, the doctrine of existentialism also rejects guiding principles, systems, ideologies, and any moral exterior to man;

Richard Wright's novels Native Son and The Outsider illustrate that existentialist vision oflife in the particular context ofhis time and society.

ln Native son, Richard Wright portrays Bigger Thomas, the stereotypical "nigger", by using the tenets of naturalism and existentialism. If as the naturalists contend, physiological conditions, environmental influences and circumstances determine human personality, so that human beings are the products of their environment, then Native Son indicates that Bigger Thomas responds to environmental forces he cannot controi.

But here for the scope of our study, we are not concemed with naturalism in the novel, but we will present Bigger Thomas as an existentialist hero. For the meaninglessness of Bigger's existence is at one with the existential philosophy. When, at the end of the novel, Bigger says , "But what l killed for, l am" he is accepting responsibility for his action. He is ultimately responsible for his actions and must be held accountable. By killing, Bigger has carved out an identity for himself; by destroying, he has created. For the first time in his life he is somebody

a murderer. The word "murderer" is appropriate, since Bigger convinces himself after Mary's accidental death that he really intended to kill her.

ln order to show how far Bigger Thomas is an existential hero, we will focus our attention on his immediate physical and psychological environment. Indeed, Bigger is trapped in a hostile environment made of white domination, Chicago's ghetto, and the weakness of the Thomases' family. Then we will examine Bigger's emancipation or struggle for freedom after the accidental killing of Mary Dalton.

And last , we will refer to his religion and show that, in a true existentialist fashion, he scoms religion and the Christian faith.

III -1 BIGGER'S THOMAS' HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT

The story of Bigger Thomas reconstructs the social atmosphere prevailing in the South after the emancipation of the Negroes. Their closeness to the white world generated hostility, hatred, and violence between the two races. Living in Chicago's South Side in the 1 930's, Bigger's every action is predicated on his

obsessive fear of the white man. There was no real security for him and he could meet his death at the white man's han~s any time.

Wright expresses an existentialist vision of the race relation in America through the plot of Native Son.

Bigger Thomas, a nineteen-year-old Black, an immigrant from the South is hired as chauffeur by the rich Mr Dalton. Mary, Mr Dalton's daughter asks him to drive her to a rendez-vous with her forbidden boyfriend, Jan Erlone, a white communist. During the evening, Mary and Jan are friendly toward Bigger, thus proclaiming Bigger's racial equality., At the end of the party, Mary is drunk and Bigger has to carry her to her room. The blind Mrs Dalton enters to see if her daughter has retumed; but Bigger fearing that he will be discovered pushes a pillow down over her face and smothers her inadvertently. Then he makes an

attempt to cast suspicion on Jan Erlone by suggesting that Communists have kidnapped Mary. He enlists the help of his girlfriend Bessie but, fearing that she may give him away, he murders her. He is hunted, caught, and condemned to

As an object of contempt and brutality, anxious to survive in a hostile white environment, Bigger is always afraid when dealing with the oppressor. His fear is

first reported in his delaying the robbery at Blum's. Bigger and his gang have planned to rob a Jew's store. But on the very day, Bigger provokes a hysterical fight to prevent the gang from "doing the job" and to cover his lack of courage and

fear. We can see then, how his own education has greatly influenced his action. He was born in the environment where he had been taught to fear the whites and to vow them obedience in order to avoid the risk of punishment by lynching or death. Therefore, keeping this education in mind, Bigger dreads the possible consequences that he and his companions might endure if unexpectedly they got caught during the robbery. When they now corne to take Blum's store as their next target the plan was not carried out straight away because the boys came to the

knowledge that robbing Blum who is a white person "would be a violation of ultimate taboo" .

"They had the feeling that the robbing of Blum's would be a violation of ultimate taboo; it would be a trespassing into territory where the full wrath of an alien world would be turned 100 se upon them." 1

Bigger's tragedy is that he lives in a society where he sees other boys especially white boys going to movies, enjoying themselves in amusement rooms

and buying anything they want. Therefore, he immediately feels deprived since he has no means to afford them. Whitescan afford to do everything they want because they are rich. Bigger himself observes:

got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It just like living in j ail. " 1

That affirmation reveals the segregated basis of the American society. Bigger is jobless and he lives on relief. Therefore, he is so conditioned by the racial situation that he cannot respond to individual whites as separate persons but only as an abstract embodiment of white power. The inadequacy of his education and his reform school precludes his ever being capable of providing any satisfactory means of supporting himself and his family. One must of course consider Bigger's

rejection of the offer of the Daltons to help him attend night school and continue his education for even beyond that level. Earlier that day, Bigger laments the fact that Blacks are not allowed to enter certain professions. For him, it is symbolised by the airplanes he wishes to fly. The young man refuses off ers of assistance to

complete his education for no matter his education, the professions to which he might aspire are closed to him.

The life of Bigger Thomas is an unmitigated denial of his hopes. He will not be more integrated in Northem society, he will hover in "No Man's land" because

of the white society and its discriminatory laws. Therefore, Bigger is to live a meaningless existence created out of fear and hatred. As a matter of fact, Bigger is

tom between fear which is basically the fear of the whites and hatred which is an

expression of his latent aggressive feeling. Bigger doesn't really know what to do of his life.

"He wanted to run. Or listen to some swing music. Or laugh or joke. Or read a real Detective

Story Magazine. (...). These were the rhythms ofhis life : indifference and violence; period<s of abstract brooding and periods of intense desire; moments of

Moreover, the physical reality of the ghettos also affects the personality of Bigger Thomas. As a matter of fact, Bigger' s home is located in the Black Belt, Chicago' s ghetto. The South Side of Chicago where Black people are housed near the railroad is an area of devastated filthy slums. Like every other urban ghetto, the Black Belt is characterised by abandoned, crumbling, and overcrowded fiats. The opening scene in Native Son shows ~im, his brother Buddy, sister Vera, and their mother sharing a one -room fiat. Their dwelling lacks adequate space for privacy indicated by the fact that each member of the family must keep his eyes averted

while others dress. This one room serves as kitchen, living room, and bedroom. Their apartment is haunted by an enormous rat which symbolically indicates the status of vermin they have been relegated to by society. Mrs Thomas and Vera got hysterical at the rodent' s appearance; before Bigger and his brother can kill it, it bites Bigger' s trousers' leg.

Bigger who is not unaware of~hat serious problem of accommodation, says to one member of his gang in the street: "you get more heat from sun than from their old radiators at home,,2The Negro knows that the invisible walls of the ghetto hold him prisoner. The home of the ghetto lacks comfort and therefore does not attract him; he feels more at ease in the streets, yet landlords are always knocking

at his door for money. During the Great Depression, houses were scarce and this worsened housing conditions for Blacks. Bigger

remembered the time when the police had corne and driven him and his mother and his brother and sister out of a flat in a building which had collapsed two days after they had moved out... He knew that Black people could not go outside the Black Belt to rent a flat" 1

Those squalid surroundings affect Bigger in terms of resentment, frustration, hostility, despair, apathy, self-depreciation, and resignation. Bigger who is made to live in a rat-infested house knows quite that others are not so dehumanised. The inaccessibility of the world he covets adds to his despair. For example, Gus

looking wistfully at a plane advertising gasoline flying up in the sky says : "Them white boys can fly". To this, Bigger replies: "They get a chance to do everything". W e can see a Bigger accepting his conditions of living in resignation.

White society hems Bigger in the hell of the Dalton basement to maintain glowing, scaring, fury fumace. Mrs Dalton's whiteness haunts him. Upon first seeing her, he notices that "her face and hair were completely white; she seemed to him like a ghost". lndeed , the blind woman looks like a white blur. During an interview with the wealthy family whose chauffeur he is to be, he saw the luxury

of the world he has only known from outside. He is-ill at-ease, clumsy, tense and bewildered; he is ashamed and seemed humiliated. When he is questioned by Mr Dalton, we see a timid, diffident and ignorant Bigger who acts in a "Jim Crow" way, answering "Yessuh; nosuh...". Bigger chooses this appearance in order to sustain the whites prejudice conceming the Blacks' real value commonly distorted with the image of a stupid and uncivilised man who does not know much about the modem life :

"He had not raised his eyes to the level of the Dalton's face once since he had been in the

house. He stood with his knees slightly bent, his lips partly open, his shoulders stooped and his eyes held a look that went only to the surface of things. There was an organic conviction in him this was the way the white folk wanted him to be in their presence. None had ever told him that in so many words, but their manners had made him feel they did. . . "l

Bigger is so afraid that he awkwardly sat on the very edge of the chair at the Dalton's place. Besides, during the interview, his answers are brief and contrived to match his assumed awkward gestures in order to prove that he is definitively an idiot Negro:

"...Well, l'm Mr Dalton" "Yessuh" "Do
you think you'd like driving a car? " "Oh
Yessuh" "Did you bring the paper? "
"Suh! " "Didn't the relief give you a note
to me? " "Oh, Yessuh! ,,2

No one in the Dalton's house viewed Bigger as a human being; he is invisible to them and is seen only as a stereotype. Mary Dalton is generous and weIl meaning but her tactlessness illustrates how difficult it can be for Bigger to go along with a member of the dominant class. When she wonders aloud how Blacks

"...You know, Bigger, l've long wanted to go into these houses... and just see how your people live... 1 want to know those people. Never. Never in my life have 1 been inside a

Her constant use of "Y ou", "Y our", and "They" embarrasses Bigger. Even when he is compelled to eat with Mary and Jan, he pretends to be reluctant and

The long scene in the fumace-room is a vivid depiction of the extent to which whites have become blind through their oppression of Bigger. For instance, Britten, the private detective Mr Dalton has called on to deal with the mystery of his daughter's disappearance, suspects Bigger though there is no evidence yet of the latter's involvement in the affair. Bigger himself knew that Britten was his enemy. When Mary's bones are finally discovered in the fumace, Bigger is afraid

Moreover, Bigger's family is part of his hostile environment. Parents' influence on children is basic in the shaping of their character; sustained parental care and guidance have healthy impact on children and therefore foster peace and. cohesion in society. Richard Wright's depiction of the Thomases' family exemplifies its weakness as a stable family. Mrs Thomas replaces the father here; she does her best to provide for her children and bestows a great deal of affection on them. But the extremely bad living conditions of the family affect the normal interrelation. Mrs Thomas snaps at all her wrangling children, but her most bitter reproaches are addressed to Bigger who is shiftless and troublesome. She thinks Bigger does not care about the way they live. Bigger's mother is aware of the queer nature of her son but cannot ,understand why he is so. The truth is that Bigger is subject to a serious handicap: there is no father image upon which he can model

his behaviour. Such an absence, generates in him a feeling of insecurity as a mIe and hinders the confidence he needs to face the problem of life.

Bigger's position within the family is ambivalent: as a teenager, he still needs the advice and the guidance of a father on the one hand, and on the other hand he should be the one to provide for the needs of his mother, brother, and

sister. Bigger has no job and obviously cannot support his family materially : this is a serious blow to his ego and it adds to his anger. Bigger Thomas is an unhappy boy, sick of his life at home. From the outset, his uneasiness is expressed through the discussion he had with his family and then,

"He shut their voices out of his mind. He hated his family because he knew that they were suffering and that he was powerless to help them . He knew the moment he allowed himself to feel to its fullness how they live , the shame and misery of their lives, he would be swept out of himself with fear and despair. So he held toward them an attitude of iron reserve; he lived with them, but behind a wall, a curtain. And toward himself, he was even more exactly... ,,1

The reference to the cacophonous sound of the alarm dock in the opening line of the novel seems to represent Bigger's meaningless existence we have dealt

with here. But waking up, Bigger will "shut that thing off' and create himself a new, meaningful existence.

The transformation noticed in Bigger is brought about by the murder he commits on Mary Dalton, a murder which has a tremendous psychological impact on him. After the killing, instead of a previously impulsive and fearful character, one sees a new Bigger momentarily emancipated. "Now that he had killed Mary he felt a lessening of tension in his muscles; he had shed an invisible burden he had long carried. ,,1

Up to then, Bigger Thomas has conceived of white people as omnipotent, untouchable supermen who controlled his existence. Before the accidental killing of Mary, the mere thought of exercising violence against them generated so much fear in him that his will was paralysed. Bigger Thomas' crime gives him the opportunity to recognise that his former deferential attitudes cannot bring him an immediate solution. Mary's accidental killing makes Bigger discover that he had smashed the gigantic white mountain that is oppressing him : that realisation filled him with a new sense ofhis own existence, ofhis own worth as a human being. He

is now free from the atavistic fear that has been instilled into his person by the system.

The metamorphosis which takes place in him at this stage resembles the change that occurs in man after he had made an existential choice. Bigger is himself aware of his rebirth as a "free" man for he avows that he can control himself after the murder. As his lawyer Boris Max declares, Mary's murder has been a pre-existential act of creation for Bigger; before he killed, Bigger's life was controlled by white people, after committing the crime he thinks he will fashion his

Bigger; out ofMary's death cornes lif.e for Bigger : he has murder and has created a new life for himself. Again Max offers the correct explanation :

"It was the first full act of his life; it was the most meaningful, exciting and stirring thing that had ever happened to him. He accepted because it made him free, gave him the possibility of choice, of action, the opportunity to act and to feel that his actions carried weight ,, 1

Another proof of Bigger gaining his self-control is the attempt he makes to get a ransom out of the affair. Whereas previously, very much aware of the penalty involved in venturing into the white man's world, Bigger foils the plan to rob Mr Blum, he now becomes intrepid enough to attempt to confuse people by mixing up the murder case with a ransom; aIl this organised in the calculated manner of a

Bigger uses violence as a means of proclaiming his freedom and selfrealisation. AIso, he believes himself the equal of whites because he has destroyed their most prized possession. After Mary's death, Bigger begins to rationalise that he has destroyed symbolically aIl the oppressive forces that have made his life miserable. He kills white oppression in the person of Mary Dalton, the ideal product of the system. Earlier in his life, Bigger himself knows he will use violent

"He knew that the moment he allowed his life meal).t to enter fully into his consciousness, he will either kill himself or somebody else, ,2

The second odious act of violence results in the death of Bessie Mear who is Bigger Thomas' girl-friend. She is ~ object of sexual release for Bigger. He so trusts her that he involves her in his schemes to extort ten thousand dollars from

the Daltons. When the remains of Mary are discovered in the fumace, Bigger tums again to Bessie. However, once she discovers that Bigger had killed the girl, she becomes untrustworthy in terms of Bigger needs. Bigger Thomas realises that she becomes a threat to him. Therefore, he kills her horribly with a brick and feels a

"And yet out of it aIl, over and above aIl that had happened, impalpable but real, there remained to him a queer sense of'power. He had done this. He had brought aIl this about. ln aIl of his life these two murders were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him. He was living truly and deeply, no matter what others might think, looking at him with their blind eyes. Never had he had the chance to live out the conse.quences of his actions; never has his will been so free as in this night and day of fear and murder and flight. " 1

ln Bessie has been killed Black submission which helps to explain Bigger's feeling of elation. ln fact, for Bigger.. Thomas, the two murders represent the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him for they result from a long, brooding anguish against the whites :

was not the first time he had ever killed. He had killed many times before, but only during

Bigger Thomas' murder of Mary Dalton and Bessie Mear as acts of self- assertion are also acts which set him free spiritually. More important, he is proud

to have killed and to give a new meaning to his life. Therefore he does not feel sorry for it :

for, l am! What l killed for must've been good! It must have been good! . . .I didn't know l was really alive in this world until l felt things hard enough to kill for'em ,,2

Bigger Thomas thinks that his real destiny is within his grasp and that it is his responsibility to shape his fate acçording to his own will. Il As long as he could take his life into his own hands and dispose of it as he pleased, as long as he could decide just when and where he would run to, he need not be afraid. 11 3Yet this can

be possible only through his own actions and commitment. He has to assert himself through his own deeds and he cannot escape the consequences of his actions. Presumably what bestows freedom upon Bigger is a developing awareness and a final willingness to face .the truth. "He could run away, he could remain, he could even go down and confess what he had done. The mere thought that these avenues of action were open to him made him feel free, that his life was his, that he held his future in his hands. ,,4If is only when I3igger feels that he is bom anew thanks to his actions, when he finds out that he is now surviving that he cornes to understand

from now on"lHe is moved with pity toward his family. His anger against his friends Gus, G.H., and Jack is transformed into a wish for better things for themo

At last his distrust of white people is replaced by respect and love for Jan ErIone and Boris Max. More than ever, he cornes to the reflection that "even these people

whose hatred had shaped his life were trying like himself to reach something beyond their grasp". But more emphatically, Bigger's achievement ofpersonal self-

assertion and freedom to survive in a 'white controlled society is epitomised by this statement to Max:

" l'm aIl right, Mr Max. Just go and tell Ma l was aIl right and not worry none, see? Tell her l was aIl right and wasn't crying none... "l

To sum up according to the critic Brignanno Russel's statement, Bigger Thomas' fteedom through murder has raised him from the darkness of his life to

Violence gives him a sense of fteedom from oppression and power in the, shaping of his destiny. Bigger Thomas is resorting to violence to mould his personality with his psychological transformation. Indeed he refers to violence as a means of proclaimingOhis freedom and self-realisation through the murder of Mary Dalton. ln the process, he accomplishes the existentialist doctrine. That man's

destiny is dependent on his own actions to ftee himself from the shackles of this worId.

The white girl's death though accidental does not explain less the violence so settled in the hero, for this Clescription reveals a character without scruple, capable of aIl kinds of harm and ab surdity ° But Bigger did go further, discovering the

meaning of his act, his feeling and attitudes changed. Moreover, he did not feel guilty after the fumace scene, he was only concemed with the effective burning of the body so that the murder would not be discovered. For no one in the world did he feel any fear now. The killing put Bigger in a position of having to consider himself and his situation in a completely new light. Like a man risen up weIl from a long illness, he felt deep and wayward whims. He has now achieved heroic stature. He is proud for he has reached an ultimate level of rebellion with the death

It seems that he finds fui filment only by the most violent defiance of the society that oppresses him. As a cri minai feeling elation, he achieves a rebirth which is in the measure of the meaninglessness of his former existence. He mainly feels a new pride of having done "something big", unknown to his blind environment. His crime was an anchor weighing him safely in time, giving him a name; it added to him a certain confidence which bis gun and his knife did not. It was a kind of eagemess he felt, a confidence, a fullness, a freedom; his whole life was caught up in a supreme and meaningful act. His attitudes throughout are determined by the heightened perceptions he enjoys as a result of the murder. He took advantage of the blindness of the others, fooling white folk during the inquest, and toying with the police. His real achievement is his diversion of Britten's

attention from himself by acting like an ignorant Black. Thus both press and police

Bigger associates his' girl-friend Bessie Mear in the collection of the supposed kidnapped girl's ransom and then in his nightly escapes, knowing that he would get rid of her at the right time. Bigger's first and second crimes have given

him the knowledge of himself and his true identity. As an act of creation, these crimes raise mm from the level of obscurity to realm of recognition. "Never had

his will been so free as this night or day of fear and murder and flight". The point to make then is that Bigger is a human being whose world had made him incapable of relating to others, except through violence and crime. But did Bigger ever feel

any guilt or regret? He is prepared to die without the slightest regret for kiUing twice. Only a queer sense of power remained in him.

"He had committed murder twice and had created a new world for himself...In aU of his

life these twb murder were the most meaningful things that had ever happened to him. He was living, truly and deeply." 1

Furthermore, Bigger's violence has been finaUy shown during his capture by the police. Unwilling to surrender, in a position of self-defence like the rat that bit back at the beginning of the novel, he struck one of the policemen with his gun. He ev en shot many times to get rid of those policemen who were trying to reach him

at the top of the roof. He was not afraid. They defeated him by the means of a hoe, splashing him with water; weakened, he feU and was captured.

Yet, Bigger owns something, which is left to him, it is his newbom freedom which allows him to choose his course of action." Having been thrown by an accidental murder in a position where he has sensed a possible order and meaning in his relations with the people about him, he has accepted the moral guilt and responsibility for that murder it had made him feel free for the first time in his life,,2. He has thus chosen murder instead of other reactions, since white oppression gives birth to a variety of attitudes. The majority of the Blacks are submitted to the

same suffering but they do not react the same way : some seek consolation through religion, alcohol or dep~aved life and enjoyment; others struggle for education and welfare and constitute the Black bourgeoisie. Very few Negroes rebel openly,

At the end of the book, the last part of the story consists of Bigger's sorrowful meditations which go from his capture to his execution. After the lawyer'~ speech has failed to save him, and whites are waiting for his impending

death on the electric chair, Bigger takes up the shield of hate which is his destiny. Repossessed by hate, he ends by accepting what life has made of him, a kiIler, a criminal. He rejects aIl kinds of compassion, and finally accepts his doom. He remains on his uncompromising position by wholly accepting his fate. What

Bigger leams as a result of fear made him able to go to the electric chair declaring in existential terms that what he has done has had value:

" It must've been good! When a man kiIls, it's for something. l didn't know l was really alive in the

It contrasts with the drama and the excitement of the preceding scenes, and can be compared to the last part of The Stranger written by Albert Camus. Indeed, there are some similarities in Bigger Thomas' and Meursault's meditations and reactions. Each of them has committed a co Id blooded murder and is condemned to death. These two characters are strange, their behaviour, when about to die, is characterised by an acceptance of their fate. They wait for death in a equanimous state; it is after aIl what they deserve. Hope and despair are mixed in them; it is useless to seek protection, comfort or salvation. They realise the meaninglessness

Bigger's self-creation and emancipation goes along with his rejection of religion.

The economic, social, and political situation of Blacks tremendously adds to their commitment to religion. Indeed, Negroes constitute a separate race stunted, stripped and held captive in America, devoid of political, social, economic and property rights. This state of poverty is made up by a resort to religion.

Mrs Thomas invokes religion, to draw her consolation, her comfort and a holy protection in order to face the squalid conditions of the family. Thus, not only does she thank God for what she eats, but she uses quite a religious symbol comparing life to a mountain railroad which a man must endeavour to follow from the cradle to the grave. The white religion extremely affects the mind of Bigger's mother to a point of obsession, in so far as she lives entirely under the law of the Scripture to which she identifies herself. Accordingly, despite his difficulties, man has to rely on God and try his best to overcome these difficulties in order to guarantee his survival until his death. Christian religion as far as its principles are concemed teaches man submission a,nd humility. Generally speaking, completely "acculturated" by whites, some Black people definitively make of it a means of survival. Their life is thoroughly controlled by the religious regulations and rules. ln Church they have been taught that their God of goodness can relieve them of their burden. People who feel downtrodden, afflicted, and oppressed think that by

resorting to religion which promises honey and milk, they can get solution to their

predicament. The religious beliefs provide consolation and spiritual strength to bear one's social conditions.

Bigger's final hatred of religion is mostly inspired by his social experience as a Negro in a white dominated society. ln this respect, the bitter reality which occurs is when a captive Bigger is c,onfronted by a Ku Klux Klan cross flaming atop a building behind an enraged and hostile mob. Yet previously in the prison when he is waiting to be judged, he received the visit of the Rev. Hammond who having delivered him a good sermon, gives him a cross to wear, as a symbol of the

remembrance of Christ. Bigger believes in the possible Christian salvation and he accepts the cross from the preacher in his cell but later loses his faith and drives it away. Naturally when Bigger Thomas sees the Ku Klux Klan cross, he ovemight think of the paradox between the symbolic offering of salvation for all men and the hateful motivation behind the buming of the cross of the Ku Klux Klan, this racial organisation whose main action is to, terrorise Negroes and Whites on the side of

During an interview between Bigger and his Marxist lawyer Max, Bigger says that he no longer can attend services after he realises the" singing, shouting, and praying of his Black skins did not get them nothing". Bigger's observation is relevant with the Jim Crow law imposed on the Blacks, which teaches them their place and prevents them from taking advantage of the American modem achievements. That is why Bigger accuses his Black folk of accepting to serve submissively a system which deprive~ them of everything and which utterly shows and reinforces the supremacy of the Whites. Negro behaviour as Bigger himself points out that white people want Blacks to be religious so that they can do what they like with them.

Another important impact on religion lies on the emotional and moral transformation it brings about. Life according to God's way teaches Black people that they have to arrange their life in a honourable manner, having to forget and forgive instead of sulking and attempting to avenge. Whenever Blacks undergo violent acts from whites in the name of God they forget about. The submissive attitude on the one hand pays them in terms of their avoidance of white reprisaI and lynching and on the other it makes white people believe that Blacks are weak

therefore to their crueIty and intimidation. Moreover, in the desire to put the religious laws into practice Blacks are more likely to avoid being involved in vicious achievements such as rape or robbery which are considered horrible sins. The same belief is shared by Bigger's mother who dreads God more than anything else making mm the core of his life. Mrs Thomas' retreat into religion provides her with consolation, to put up with her suffering and bring up her children in rightness and submission.

Instead Bigger joins in a combined force to fight religion in order to allow himself to have his plac~ in the sun; He does not share his mother's religion and seems to consider man's revoit :

"He hates hismother for that way of hers which was like Bessie's. What his mother had was Bessie's whiskey, and Bessie's whiskey was his mother's religion. He did not want to sit on a bench and sing, or lie in a corner and sleep. It was when he read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies, or walked along the streets with crowds, that he felt what he wanted : to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed a chance to live li~e others, even though he was"l

This involves a genuine commitment and determination. Once more, existentialism views man as set free from the daim of a God, Bigger also perceives

man's position as such. When Bigger meets his death not in despair but with a belief that he is at last to acquire a new freedom by shaping his own destiny he one way or another reaffirms the existentialist tenet that man's freedom is within his

. grasp. It is therefore unnecessary to place too much confidence and trust in a God who helps only those who help themselves.

Religion, because of the happy life it promises, incites hope and provides moral strength. Bigger's family believe in it and entirely rely on it to give a meaning to their existence and to yeam for a better life after their death. Bigger rejects religion thoroughly though he is aIl the same psychologically influenced

organising himself in a concrete way in order to find solution to his problems . provided that true happiness of man is the results of his own actions. Mrs. Thomas,

Bigger's mother, finds solace in religion; Reverend Hammond's influence on her is

indeniable. A devout woman, she believes that the fight for a possible well-being and happiness on earth is useless; only happiness in Heaven is her objective. Vera,

following in her mother's steps is already fearful of life and has surrendered her freedom despite her young age.

Bigger scoms religion and the Christian faith. He drives away the priest who tries to persuade him to pray and believe in God. He is aggressive in ignoring the humble Reverend Hammond. "And at once he was on guard against the man. He shut his heart and tried to stifle aIl feeling. He feared that the priest would make

him feel remorse. He waited to tell him to go... "lThe next scene is also telling of Bigger's aggressivity:

"Yu gotta b'lieve tha' Ga~d gives etemallife th'u the love of Jesus. Son, look at me ..." Bigger's black face rested in his hands and he did not move. "Son, promise me yu'll stop hatin' long enuff fer Gawd's lovet'come enter yo' heart" Bigger said nothing. "Won't yuh promise, son? "Bigger covered his eyes with his hands. "Jus' say yuh'll try, son" Bigger felt that if the preacher kept asking he would leap up and strike him. How could he believe in that which he had killed? ,, 1

Bigger throws away the cross given him by the preacher; then he throws a cup of hot coffee into the priest's face. For him, nothing matters; yet he searches for the meaning of his living and dyin.g; he feels isolated and longs to be part of the outside world. When he sneaks into his flat to get his pistols to prepare for robbing Blum's delicatessen, his mother is singing a hymn :

But his mother's song is wholly ineffective in his world; it does nothing to forestall his violence. Again, when Bigger is hiding in an empty apartment, he hears singing from a small church.

The mood of security and resignation that it induces in the worshippers is not without appeal to Bigger, but he cannot accept the surrender, the acquiescence

"W ould it not have been better for him had he lived in that world the music sang of? It would have been easy to have lived in it, for it was his mother's world, humble, contrite, believing. It had a centre, a core, an axis, a heart which he needed but could never have

unless he laid his head upon a pillow of humility and gave up rus hope of living in the world. And he would never do that" 1

After his capture, Bigger tearsthe crucifix from his neck to emphasises his denial of his mother's Christianity. He later rejects the cross offered him by the

Rev. Hammond, the pastor of his mother's church, when the Ku Klux Klan ignites its fiery cross not far from the Dalton residence. "1 don't want it", "1 can die without a cross!", "1 ain't got no soul", "1 don't care", he would curse when the policemen picked up the cross and brought it back.

A more militant kind of religion is represented by the Ku Klux Klan's fiery cross on top of the building near the Dalton's home. The function of Christianity is to hand an opiate to the Black masses and to lynch those who will not be killed into oblivion of their conditions. After see'ing the flaming cross, Bigger rejects violently the wooden crucifix, Reverend Hammond, and later a Catholic priest. "1 don't want you! Take your Jesus and go!" he shouted.

The theme of rebellion is the central meaning of Native Son, which the particulars of Wright craft -structure, characterisation, and symbolism -are

designed to express. Bigger rebels against religion, against his family, against his companions and black life in general, and against the white society that oppresses him. The two most important specific. forms that this rebellion takes are rape and murder, crimes which Bigger both is and is not guilty of. ln his rebellion, anguish,

and isolation, Bigger is much as existential hero as Cross Damon, the protagonist ofWright's next novel, The Outsider (1953).

The Outsider is the first of four novels written by Richard Wright after his exile in Paris. ln The Outsider Richard Wright combines the basic tenets of e)(istentialism to present the picture of a solitary individual willing to create the ideal man in the modem world. Cross Damon is a thinking, a questioning man in the perplexing twentieth century. Indeed, the topic is man against the world, absurd existence in a world of chaos, chance or accident, and man's dread of his fate in that

world. Cross Damon is an existential hero who escapes from his nightmarish life to exercise his freedom and to "shape for himself the kind of life he felt he

A close examination of the main theme in The Outsider leads us to present Cross Damon as a black intellectual caught in a web of dreadful life made of a shrewish wife, a religious mother, a pregnant mistress he does not love, and a

boring postal job which disgusts him. Then we will show how he seizes a fortuitous subway accident to begin a new existence and create the kind of life he

Communist Party: a diatribe againstCommunism and the Fascist ideology is part of Cross Damon's existentialist adverÙure.

On the whole, we have centred our study of The outsider on Cross Damon's life before and after his existentialchoice.

"Dread is an alien power which lays hold of an individual, and yet one cannot tear oneself, nor has a will to do so, for one fears what one des ires ,, 1

Cited by Richard Wright on page 1 of The Outsider. that quotation from Kierkegaard establishes from the outset Cross Damon's life as a dreadful one. It really sets up the absurd world Cross Damon is living before his existential choice. As a matter of fact, the dread in Cross Damon's life is shown through the first

section of the novel. A black postal worker living in Chicago, he is a relatively young intellectual trapped in a dead-end, bleak existence. He feels overwhelmed by tremendous burdens.

The first burden in Damon's Jife is his failed marriage. His wife Gladys Damon is a shrewish woman who spends her time squeezing him for money. She begins her day by physically and verbally abusing her husband. She violently subdues Damon and does not assumes her role of housewife. Damon's resentment

at being lurked into marriage has grown into a rage that he frequently and violentlY vents on his wife. He forewams Gladys that her time for this kind of behaviour is running out: "This is the last time you're going to do this to me <2)

Another problem in Damon's life is his emotional mother. She is too religious and pious and will be troubljng his son with guilt. Cross Damon feels that she does not love him and, like his father, has rejected him. He feels that she has

been especially cruel to him when she beat young Damon and failed to give him food to eat. Bis unsuccessful relationship with his mother cornes to a point of

hatred and biological bittemess. Bis mother's religion and resulting fanatic behaviour are mixed with this. Dread and hatred has motivated his flight from Chicago. Be then becomes morbidly curious about everybody's attitude toward him.

The third burden in Cross Damon's life is his love affair with his mistress Dorothy Powers. She is a fifteen year old and a good natured girl who becomes Damon 's lover following his familial misfortunes. Yet, Dorothy falls pregnant and threatens to accuse Damon of rape. As for the women Damon has met and cared for in various degrees, he is always sadistic toward her and he demands a kind of masochistic behaviour from her. After courting Dot and thinking of marrying her, he sits down on a park bench and tells her he has found the woman with whom he chooses to spend the rest of his life. But once Dot becomes pregnant, he decides she is wrong for him.

The last but not the least burden in Damon's life is his tedious job. Damon finds his postal work in Chicago as, boring and troublesome. Be and his friend spend most of their leisure and work time together, chatting about sex, racism; sports, the meaning of life and death, and their dreams about the future. The work at the post office is killing him, but he is trapped by lack of money and cannot

leave. Bis friends are rather naive men who can quickly convince themselves that all is right and they have to blame only themselves for their problems. But Cross Damon is aware of his familial problems and is also conscious that he lives in a warped world that imposes its ambiguities and contradictions on him. Cross

Southem roots in Mississippi to transplant himself into what is perceived to be a more desirable environment for Blacks, Chicago. The lure is not that Chicago was desegregated but there is at least the possibility of work for Blacks. Damon is fortunate to be employed as a postal worker during the Great Depression, when jobs are scarce for everyone. Nevertheless, Richard Wright makes clear that

Damon and the other black postal workers suffer under extreme conditions of discrimination in their work environment. Damon's job is as much as part of the traps in which he finds himself as are his marriage, his mother, his mistress. During his tedious day of work at post-office, Damon is subjected to a shift of sorting mail under the scrutiny of white supervisors who go out their way to inflict stress and

Because of aIl these' tremendous burdens, Cross Damon feels insulted at being alive, humiliated at the terms of existence. He feels the kind of nausea prior

to any existential choice. Damon is an archetypal figure symbolising vividly the dilemma of many people from an existential perspective. It is in that sense Damon becomes a tragic figure, not because of who he is or his failures in life but because he has met the destiny of so many people like him.

The novel takes the reader on a joumey with Cross Damon as he goes through the drudgery of his life.

Stifled by a shrewish wife he no longer loves, an emotional mother he both loves and hates, a pregnant mistress, and a routine job Cross Damon struggles to

create an independent and more authentic existence for himself. His quest for a new existence passes through freedom and rebellion .

A fortuitous subway accident in which he is believed to have been killed provides him with the opportunity to escape his dreadfullife. When authorities use the overcoat and identification papers he has left behind after climbing from the train crash to identify another victim as him, Cross Damon decides to abandon his job and his family. After assuming a number of aliases he joumeys to New York. Yet, before he leaves Chicago, he murders a co-worker to protect his secret.

ln New York city, Cross Damon struggles to create a new identity. At first, he finds himself at the centre of the world of the laws ofhis own feelings. But now, Damon believes strongly that "what man is perhaps to much to be bom by a man." 1 It is important to remark that he usually thinks in a stream of consciousness fashion (p.81-84). Cross Damon takes first the name of Addison Jordan so that alienation is further prolonged in his lost identity. He afterwards adopts the identity

of Lionel Lane, a de ad man, and becomes involves with the communists Gilbert and Eva Blount. After meeting Damon alias Lionel Lane, the communist couple invite him to share their apartment in Greenwich Village. As a matter of fact, Gil Blount is a white Communist Party officiaI who wants to use Damon in order to

incite the racist Langley Hemdon. Thé Blounts wish to desegregate their apartinent building managed by the Fascist slumlord. His new social contacts make him feel at ease and Damon accepts the challenge proposed by the Blounts. The dreamlike state in which he has lived since his flight Chicago leaves him.

After moving to Greenwich village, Cross Damon starts exploring his new psychological freedom. He discovers and reads Eva Blount's diary from which he

learns Gil Blount has deceived her by marrying her not out of love but because the Communist Party has ordered it. ln fact, she is an abstract artist, she is married to Gil at the suggestion of the Party in order to recruit her; she finds this out in Paris when on her honeymoon she and Gil are in each other's arms; she wants to leave him, but the party had said no, she rnust stay or they'll slander her. She stays and

. she is in that state of mind when she meets Cross. Alarmed over this cynical violation of individual rights, Damon vows that the Party will not destroy his freedom and humanity. That he has violated Eva's privacy never enters his mind.

Later, Langley Herndon initiates a violent argument with Gil Blount. When entering the room ostensibly to stop Blount and Herndon from fighting, Cross Damon kills both men and arranges the eues so that it appears they have killed

each other. Damon rationalises that, in destroying the communist and the fascist, he is killing "gods" who would rob him of his freedom. Only much later does he comprehend that in slaying them-: : -exercising his complete freedom-he has

himself assumed the role of a god : "Oh, Christ their disease had reached out and claimed him too. He had been subverted by the contagion of the lawless; he had been defeated by that which he had sought to destroy" 1.

The double murder is investigated by the New York City district attorney, the hunchback Ely Houston. But Cross Damon tries to hidden evidences from him so that Ely Houston decides Blount and Herndon have killed each other. Very

soon, Cross Damon and Eva Blount become loyers, following her naive assumption that Damon is a powerless victim. ln attempt to protect her from the monstrousness of himself, Damon keeps on lying to the woman. ln a desperate

attempt to conceal his previous crimes, Damon kills a high communist officiaI who has evidence which will convict him. Jack Hilton, one of Gil Blount's subordinates

in the Communist Party, is murdered by Cross Damon for fears he will reveal his guilt. However, that final murder reignites the suspicions of the Party, and another high ranking communist Bliming is chosen to examine Damon.

That Damon has become a demon is further dramatised when district attorney Ely Houston tells him his mother has died, possibly because of his deeds,

and then ushers Damon's wife and three sons into the room. Houston confronts Damon with the wife and children'and blame him for the sudden death of his mother but is unable to make Damon react. Cross Damon acknowledges no one and nothing. With no positive proof Houston Ely cannot arrest him. Finally,

Damon decides to unburden himself to Eva, but she cannot bear the truth and commits suicide by jumping out a window.

Communist Party members track him and shoot him down. Bleeding, confuse d, only half comprehending what has happened to him, Damon is utterly defeated. ln a

final scene reminiscent of Bigger Thomas's last scenes with his lawyer, Boris A. Max, Damon explains in existential terms : "Don't think l'm so odd and strange. .. I'm not...I'm legion...I've lived alone, but l'm everywhere"l.He warns of a new era when men will stop deceiving themselves about their murderous nature

and the meaninglessness of life. Dying, Damon is asked by Ely Houston what he has found in life. He responds : "Nothing. . .Alone a man is nothing" 1.

On the other hand, Cross Damon is a memorable character who wants to create himself a new existence through rebellion. Damon is a metaphysical rebel who casts aside almost all societal codes ofbehaviour like Herman Melville's Ahab

of an amoral universe in which man is destined to become either an executioner or a victim. The name Cross Damon is itself a mixture of the Christian ethics of

suffering and of the demonism of Nietzsche. He refuses to accept social norms in which he does not believe and expresses his dread. ln fact, The Outsider is strongly influenced by Kierkegaard's Concept of Dread. He becomes an ethical outlaw and intellectual rebel. Damon assumes a new identity in New York and begins a life

Metaphysical revoIt is a mov~ment through which a man rises against his condition and the whole creation, and chooses to become a murder (Dostoïevski)

or accept the evil (Nietzsche). Like Satan the first rebel, Damon himself rebels against God. He is in total rebellion against aIl that materialistic culture considered spiritually beneficial. Humility means servility, and honesty means cheating, so you are aIl right if you can get away with it. Truth is a relative matter no human being can afford. Cross Damon is an outsider aIl his life. As a post worker living in Chicago, he feels himself outside the pale of a loving, understanding, and

protecting family. He feels himself outside the accepted rules of etiquette. We can see the protagonist struggling agajnst either a life outside of the world, a confrontation with God or an existence made up of dreams, rather nightmares. One

Wright derives his concept of the ethical criminal from Dostoïevski's Brothers Karamazov. The ethical criminal is a symbol for a wandering, lost, recycled man. Wright's ethical cri minaI is the marginal man considered by society as a naught, a zero, a nothing. He is psychologically akin to Dostoïevski's character, Ivan Kirilov, who has a cri minaI mind. The existential dilemma of the marginal man who seeks, in a strea.m of consciousness, to affirm himself as a

human being. Psychologically or philosophically, the ethical criminal has deep implications for modem man. Damon is a human being of such extreme situation

that he is outside the general order of so-called civilised mankind. His personality has been so fractured by negative social forces that he is only a whole and coherent person when he is re-creating this world. He seems an air of liberty, of genuine

freedom to do as one wishes, to live in relative peace. He wants to become the libertine, the free spirit, the free thinker, relaxed and stimulated. Damon celebrates

Wright opens wide the door into Damon's inner self. He parades before us an embarrassment of conflicts, complexes, and complicated cycles of what we gradually recognise are Dostoïevskian depths in the criminal mind. They underline and emphasise the theme of The Outsider -human guilt and the problem of evil, and how they torment and tear apart the suffering human heart. His personality was further broken by his sense of alienation. He grows up hungry for knowledge,

freedom, and the recognition and acceptance ofhis personality. But everywhere he tums he feels rejected by family and friends, by fellow members of his class, by the Communists, the Church, the State and the Fascists. He grows up with dread, despair, and distrust, with a sense of loss and lack of compassiate understanding from those around him. He is a lonely man, an outsider. He is basically a very unhappy man brooding and bitter, angry and alienated, and aberrant too. His

It is useful to recall that the existential passages found in the book are enhanced by the quotations put at the beginning of each section. The second section of The Outsider, called Dreams, begins with a quotation from the poem

"F or that which 1 do 1 allow not : for what 1 would, that 1 do not ; but what 1 hate, that do l ,,2

That is obviously a key to the inner conflicts of Cross as he wrestles with evil inside ofhimself.

The fifth and final section, Decision, opens with an ironie quotation from Nietzsche:

Cross Damon is more representative of a type whose intelligence made him grapple with the ethical and metaphysical problems of a society which has lost the sense of the sacred and in which th~ collapsing of traditional values meant that everything is permitted.

The Outsider relates Cross Damon's life as a communist and bis disillusionment with the Communist Party. Actually, a diatribe against

communism is part of Damon's existentialist adventure in the novel. Cross Damon vows that the party will not destroy his freedom and humanity.

The same reasoning has made Damon struggle against socialism. For him, socialism is no more than a degenerated Christianism. It maintains that belief in the finality of History betrays life and nature, substitutes ideal to real ends, and contributes to enervate will and imagination. Cross Damon denounces these values

Damon joins the Communist Party because he believes in world revolution, particularly as the correct solution for the Blacks who are the only "downtrodden" of the American society. ln short, Damon has been won over to communism because of the Party's position on racism and segregation. Indeed the party seems

to struggle for all oppressed people or lumpenproletariat. Moreover, Cross Damon previous commitment to communism corresponds to his quest for help and

security, and constitutes a loophole to escape his predicament and to grow intellectually.

But he leaves when he feels that the revolution is not forthcoming. Black liberation is no longer in the forefront agenda of the Communist Party, neither internationally in Russia and the Komintern, nor locally in the United States. He reproaches to the Party, opportunism, recours to all means, scorn for the individual. The Marxist politics has lost confidence in itself because of hierarchy, obedience, myths, diplomacy, police, etc. Damon believes that Trotsky and Lenin are the great

figures of the Russian Revolution, not the nationalist Stalin who is really a party functionary and bureaucrat.

The Party wants Damon to fit his ideas into left-wing orthodoxy and assimilate the communist dogma. But he cannot accept thought control, political lines and disciplines, so he makes "heresy". He further protests that the discipline of the party is too much for him, feeling that a man should be free to behave as he pleases and not be ordered to do what the political party wants to do. Besides, he feels that oneshould have complete autonomy over his life. That is why, his revoIt is also nourished by the violation of Eva Blount's rights; he identifies himself with Eva. He certainly expresses his beliefs that the Communist Party do es not love him, and from the first time he has been suspicious. Communists, Damon feels,

. have used and exploited certain questions to their own needs. He feels bitterly too, that he has been used because of his naiveté, because of his isolation, his desperation, and his ambition. Moreover, communists are insensitive to the idea of

One point to recall is that Cross Damon has received his education and a white woman from the communists. Damon grows to realise he can retain the benefits of the education he receives in the ranks of the party without continuing to associate with the impossible and obnoxious cornrades he has grown to despise. Another. point Damon raises is the graduaI dissipation of the role of intellectuals. The communists decry him as an intellectual petty-bourgeois, a snob and a deviational social democrat.

Damon is almost prophetie with his premonition that the time has corne to get out of the Communist Party. Communists have always said that the day will corne when no one will dare admit his affiliation with the Party, and aIthough the

time has not yet corne, Senator Joseph Mc Carthy's communist witch hunt of the fifties is imminent. It is no longer to Damon's advantage or good fortune as a man

to stay. They owe him nothing, and whatever he owes them he feels he has paid. What he does stress is his own individualism, his maverick nature, his desire to be

a loner and not a joiner, his alienation from everything and everybody, the pattern of his life to break away from everyone-to stand rootless and alone-- and his consistent determination to remainan outsider. When he has taken the party discipline long enough and is no longer willing to accept it, in spite of himself, he is inviting the face of Medusa with her serpentine hair.

Cross Damon rejects anti-Semitism and imperialism as much as he rejects racism. The holocausts suffered by Jews in Nazi Germany under Hitler is an anathema repugnant to him. It is not acceptable by any decent human being. Marxism, Fascism and other ideas. antithetical to the Christian faith are also spurned and denied in The Outsider. ,Francesca Franco being the life time ruler of

Spain, he has made the country a bastion of fascism supported by the Vatican in Rome and Hitler in Nazi Germany. As a matter of fact, during the brief days of the Republic in Spain, the Catholic Church lost its power and its property; when Franco assumed power, he restored the Church to its power and gave back its

property .Damon vents his wrath on the Roman Catholic Church and its influence in that country. Damon condemns Spain for its fascism. He is implying that a fascist country is automaticaIly decadent and filthy in its morals. Cross spurns and rejects aIl ideologies and organised religions. Existentialist Damon believes Marx's dictum that religion is the opiate for people.

ln the whole, his break with the Communist Party and other ideologies is typical of his breaks with his family and friends throughout his life and consistent with his continuing alienation. Why should he treat the Communist Party any better than he has treated his own mother aIl his family. He has corne a long way,

but he will go further ifhe can cast off the unwanted luggage ofideology, and gain a status as more than a marginal man. That is what Cross Damon has done.

Long and complex, The Outsider is Richard Wright first consciously existentialist novel which does not emphasises racial matter. "The first time l've really tried to step beyond the straight black-white stuff', he said. Cross Damon is more representative of a type whose intelligence made him grapple with the ethical and metaphysical problems of a society which had lost the sense of the sacred and in which the collapsing of values means that everything is permitted. Actually, Cross Damon is a thinking and a questioning man in the perplexing twentieth century .

The dominant characteristics of Richard Wright's heroes are crime and violence provoked by revoIt. Both Native Son and The Outsider portray a man in a violent revoit against a hostile environment. As alien in their homeland, the heroes are crude, resentful, depressed, unstable and devoid of real kindness. Their actions are repugnant and despicable. Their suppressed feelings and emotions have been bluntly exposed.

V-l BIGGER THOMAS

Bigger Thomas resorts to violence to achieve some exploits as a man but we know that this method rushes him to electric chair. It is proper both morally and socially speaking that the criminal must be penalised. The tendency to ward violence reinforces the beliefs in one's own inferiority and it warps one's sense of right and wrong. The use of violence as a springboard for life in Native Son proves its short-term efficiency. Hence, violence is not the most symbolic way of struggle

The complex of Bigger's personality comprises fear, shame, and hatred as its primary elements. His consciousness of his fear creates a sense of shame at his

own inadequacy, equated by whites with his racial status. The combination ofthis fear and shame produces hatred, both self-hatred and hatred for the inequities of

his life and the whites responsible for those iniquities and his subsequent humiliation. Unable to cope with his dilemma in any rational way, he responds by aggression and violence. Bigger's emotional pattern precludes any viable human relationship. Bigger can attain a sense of life only by inflicting death. Boris Max, however, offers Bigger the vision of a more constructive kind of rebellion : he tries

The reactions of Bigger are unpredictable because his shattered personality in response to his environment is always swaying between fear and violence, love

and hate. Bigger is presented as a brutal individual, much affected by violence. He lacks self-control and cannot hide the frustration, the despair, the fear, and the hatred that are parts of his personality. He himself offers a certain complexity that makes it difficult to make him fit in any definite classification. He appears as an

ordinary Negro under the stress of racism, but at the same time, he is subject to contradictory reactions of a victim and a rebel. That rebel-victim is always on the brink of indulging in some verbal aggression or brutality.

It seems that Native Son is a blinding and corrosive study in hate. Bigger's hatred for whites is excessive. The lot of the blacks in America is improving gradually, but the present disposition ofWhites will not permit more rapid change. To demand immediate social justice, like Bigger, is to upset the delicate balance in race relation achieved through the exercise of exquisite, intuitive tact. Hatred, the preaching of hatred, and incitement can only make a tolerable relationship intolerable. The portrayal of Bigger is so unflinchingly harsh that the book will

Bigger is a violent individual whose violence is mostly directed against his black brothers as an uncontrolled eruption of pent up aggressiveness built over

periods of unbearable pressure. He hates the white world. because it is dangled before him but remains untouchable. It is on his fellow sufferers that he usually vents his hatred, it is then he dares to assault since he is too frightened to attack his white persecutor. Why? The oppressed Bigger attacks other oppressed people to right the balance and restore some of his ego and self-valuation. Bigger is a persecuted person whose permanent dreams is to become the persecutor. By aiming his violence at his fellow Blacks, Bigger acts against his own battle. ln such

a situation, the fellow Black who can be a potential ally is not differentiated from the oppressor.

The feeling of freedom after the accidental murder if Mary Dalton shows the extent to which Bigger's personality has become warped. His newly acquired freedom resembles almost insanity. Even if we agree to his partial rebirth after Mary's murder, one is to acknowledge that Bigger has not become a totally new and therefore psychologically sane individual. The most frightening thing about Bigger is his complete divorce from the values of common humanity. Feeling no

remorse for his terrible deeds, Bigger lives constantly with this feeling till the end of the nove!, for he remains totally adamant to his lawyer's exhortation to consider his oppressors more human beings like himself.

The discovery of ms secret propels him into a process which rides him definitely of whatever humanity is still left in him. Following the white world clamouring for his life, the old atavistic feeling of fear and despair corne back stronger than ever. Bigger goes back so rapidly to his old feeling of being a hunted animal. Fleeing from the Dalton's home, he jumps through a window and lands on the snow-carpeted earth; the shock is so hard that he urinates : this symbolises his retum to an animal-like state. One then understands that Bigger becomes a

wounded beast at bay, determined to kill in order to survive. He totally revert to

jungle law. He creates and fosters animalistic instinct in him. Feelings such as love, kindness, respect for human life are not innate to Bigger. The hatred has left to him no possibility to a real human. Bigger could have directed his revoIt against

a brutal oppressor, but instead he chooses as his victim a girl who is friendly to Negroes. By this, he shows that his sickness is too deep to be reached by kindness.

Bigger is compared to a wild animal ready to slash and tear out its prey, or to a madman who, out of his sense, reacts under powerful impulses. The white

oppressor does not less explain the. violence so settled in the hero, for Bigger reveals a character without scruple, capable of all kind of harm and absurdity. He has killed Mary Dalton inadvertently through fear. But he feels no regret for it, he does not feel guilty. He is only worried about the effective burning of the body so that the whole thing would not be discovered. It seems that HE finds fulfilment only by the most violent defiance of the society that oppresses him. No tears with Bigger Thomas, he is a character to shock everyone. His uncontrollable rage bursts out in the form of hideous violence: grotesque pictures are painted, bloodshed is not spared. Bigger's world is a Manichean world with a sharp division along the

colour line. That is the pattern after which he views the world; that is why, when Jan Erlone and Mary Dalton lavish their friendship on him, he cannot responds

The story is drawn to point out Bigger as a brutal and depraved character, a brute whose savagery goes beyond ordinary humanity. Bigger has natural aggressiveness, even if it is true that his attitudes are determined by his environment. Despite social determinism, Bigger owns something, which is left to him, it is his innate liberty that allows him to choose his course of actions. He has thus chosen murder instead of other reactions, since the white oppression gives birth to a variety of attitudes. The majority of the Black are submitted to the same sufferings but they do not react the same way. The unbearable white hostility

seems responsible for Bigger's plight; however he has a part of responsibility for, instead other outlets, he chooses destructive rebeIlion as a way of life. Is it worth rebelling as Bigger does? The remaining problem is that such a murderous rebellion seems futile because it brings powerful retaliation from the oppressors. It takes the form of self-destructive action and finaIly confirms the white ascendancy.

Bigger is provided with a complex awareness : he is too hypersensitive to racial realities and is too self-conscious to seem an actual youth. Contrary to his companions who are unemployed and stifled, Bigger get ajob and therefore he has little to complain of. Ris psychopathie lust for violence seems to confirm the white man's fantasies of Negro, capable of any crime unless kept aside.

Renceforth, Bigger is not a real existential hero; he is a victim of social and environmental determinism. Bigger has become what he is, not because he is free to choose his course of action, but because circumstances over which he has no control have driven him to his doom. A Negro youth, unable to adapt to his Jim Crow environment, goes berserk and winds up a kiIler. Bigger almost psychopathic

lust for violence gets better of him, and his revoIt becomes as completely phony and unreal.

AlI in aIl, Bigger Thomas' historical revoIt puts forth the problem of violence as means of political action. Bigger is wrong to present violence as a provisory means to prepare the advent of a society where aIl men are equal. Indeed, how can we admit that it's necessary to destroy human values so that they would be respected one day. RevoIt is for life, not against life. There needs a part of moral in

V-2 CROSS DAMON

ln The Outsider, Cross Damon expresses in a much articulated manner the same sort of rage and dread felt by Bigger. ln Native Son, Richard Wright takes the lid off social sewers of prejudice and exploitation; but in The Outsider he takes the lid off the sewer of a human mind. It is useful to approach the novel with

existentialism clearly in mind, for Cross Damon seems a clear embodiment of the existentialist hero, if not its achievements. For the most part, Damon is content to

Damon exposes the myth by which men irrationally live. Some sections of the novel are little more than existentialist jargon. Damon equates freedom with power; while exercising his unbridled freedom he murders four human beings and is partially responsible of the death of two others. Damon casts aside almost aIl societal codes of behaviour only to realise in the end that human restrictions help humanise man. The Countey Attorney is a kindred spirit who shares Damon's sense of metaphysical revoIt but instead of violence against society, he chooses to support the legal system. Unlike Houston, Damon refuses to accept social norms. Neither man nor society can accommodate completely free individuals, for they are threats to human existence. If Damon is a victim of social abuse, he is so only by implications; but by graphic demonstration he is himself an arrogant and

thoughtless animal, and nothing in the novel convinces the reader that this is a fault of society. Damon is no left-wing stereotype of a good man; he and society match each other in crude nastiness. It is absurd that he is a match for those social forces

The Outsider is a clear formulation of Damon's worldview during the 50's, as he observes unrestricted industrialism becoming the criterion for aIl values. The

diatribe transcends personal level, however, attacking the methods of totalitarism, the press campaign, the calumnies, and the ceaseless fights setting one leader against another in the struggle for power, and actually outlines the subject of the nove 1-a denunciation of the tyranny. bywhich one man arbitrarily decides to play the role of God and control the destiny of others. Damon symbolises the explosion of the social unit, the civil anarchy that results from the growing concentration of power, the weakening of faith, the secularisation of man, the advent of the Nietschean who has become his own "little god"-all characteristics of the crisis in the hero, a crisis so serious that it is debatable whether Damon is undergoing the throes of an evolution or the agony of a decline. When Damon assumes the position of an outsider he condemns himself to a lasting spiritual isolation. It has shown him problems are never sold except through non-violent action and that the individual is held responsible for creating his own values. That is the metaphysical liberation he accomplishes with so much difficulty. Damon achieves a

Dostoïevskian liberation, but he commits a fatal error in trying to bec orne God and buming the bridges that link him to mankind. Man is a promise he must not breakhumanism is the only solution. We deplore Cross' moral weakness and irrational behaviour. Violence is in the centre of the action aIl the time : there are

four murders, a suicide, an ambush murder, which ought to be enough blood. There is a kind of love story in the nove 1, but a rather seark and tortured one. His ideas are sometimes incoherent, and that detracts from the substance and power of the book. It is in carrying out actions, especially violent actions that Damon excels

making the reader see and compelling him to participate. That sustains the reader's interest as does the longest and most obscure of Cross' philosophical discourse. A clear reflection makes us feel that Cross Damon is a monster! Murder is Damon's

most valiant and successful effort to corne to terms with his feelings about the human condition. Cross Damon's feelings are thus obscure and his behaviour implausible.

Damon despises the will of power that drives men such as Gil Blount and Hemdon, but he becomef)ike them a little God playing with others' lives. His multiple murders do not free him. The ideal of univers al freedom demands the discovery or creation of norms that will protect the freedom of others. Cross Damon fails in his effort to live auth~ntically. He dreams ofbecoming one ofthose "men who were outsiders.. .because they had thought their way through the many

veils of illusions", but the new life he creates and his relationship with other characters are based on deception. Damon wishes that he "had some way to give

the meaning of his life to others", but he fails in his effort. It is true that bad faith of some degree is an indigenous part of his living. The existential hero explores the question of freedom but provides no hopeful answers, and the possibility of creating a meaningful sense of freedom seems remote. He finally discovers that the egotistical exercise of freedom destroys those around him, induding the one

Through the novel, Damon is trying to show his crimes are part and parcel of the everyday life of man and that some men know this. But that is not true. It seems that Damon is mocking us with a ghastly joke. ln fact, he is driven by no

discemible motives-racial, political, or religious-even though the author will have us believe that he is a rational person. There is no sufficient motivation for Damon's violence. Actually, he is not an existentialist hero but what is described as

the psychological man. A postman imprisoned by his milieu and a bold, intelligent murderer can exist in one man but thë transition from the first to the second (which Damon coverts in only few days) should have taken months or years. The novel opens with the description of Cross Damon's life in Chicago, his work at the post- office and his colourful conversation with his colleagues. Then Cross makes his existential choice. Although the suspense increases, the story is now lacking in

substance and human atmosphere, for which the hero's ideological dissertation are no substitute. Not only is there ambivalence between Cross' first and his second

life, but also between the chronological account of Cross' action, which is restricted to conceal episodes, and rus sometimes verbose theoretical argument.

The Outsider puts forth an unrelieved pessimism; it is a kind of "treatise on despair". The hero seems to mark the lowest point of man's pessimism, for he lacks

humanitarian feelings and does not believe in social change. He is wrong to apply the Dostoïevskian "tout est permis". He must choose justice to remain faithful to

the earth. Even if the world has no meaning in itself, there is something in it which has meaning : that is man. We do not condemn Damon's revolt, but what we condemn is that his revoIt lacks humanitarian hope. Why is he revolting if he has nothing to preserve? By revolting to preserve his freedom, he shouldn't attack the freedom of any other human being. Otherwise, he betrays the nobility and the purity of his revoIt. So Cross Damon's metaphysical revoIt goes astray when it leads him to murder and evil. Neither Bigger nor Damon's attitudes provide permanent solutions. Violence results usuaIly in the victimisation of oneself or the others. Violence engenders violence in an endless circle. Through nowadays experiences, violence does not bring lasting solutions. The example of Martin Luther King's satisfactory Montgomery peaceful demonstration results to the suppression of the segregated buses. Nobody can justify the realisation of a moral end by immoral means. Such a conception is dangerous. Violence appears the easiest means. Moreover, we must not forget that the immorality of means influence necessary the end itself. AlI in aIl, the use of violence and murder is the

Wright' heroes are obsessed with the ideas of transgression of convention and the effects resulting from the breaches of these conventions. None of them

ever has the least remorse of his act of violence. The heroes find themselves in the violation, either through the operation of will or often through circumstances. After their deeds, they may feel free of constraints, fearful and guilty or indifferent. Then the immediate solution is flight : Bigger flees as well as Damon. Whatever they do, they face the possibility of retaliation. But Wright's heroes do not mind morallaw. They always stand on the verge of violent responses to their problems. It is a sense of isolation and apartness. As outsiders, they hover in No Man's Land between the

world and themselves. They are not guided by moral law or legal implication of their misdeeds. For example, Dam°n. flees out of his free will for a better life. It seems that he resorts to escape to show that it is the only means left to men to solve their problems. Damon's tragic experiences have led him to retreat into a state of pessimism, whereas the hope for a better future and for progress prevail. Damon could have stayed in Chicago to fight in order to solve his problems. He seems to dis cards and avoid the danger.

ln Bigger and Damon, we see the prototypes of the heroes who are ever to be angry, bitter, revengeful and violent. Out of their memories have evolved a vision

of a hostile world. The design of viol,ence in the heroes may be explained this way : their sense of the dignity inflicted upon them might go so deep as to drive them to challenge the society by a whole series of murders, symbol of their revoIt. But this compels them to practise a terrible brutalisation upon others, and their portrayal confirms the image of the wild man in civilised society. We discem in them a high frustration, a tendency of aggression, an emphasis on physical insecurity and safety and a doubtful identity. The heroes are often unable to overcome their helplessness and bittemess. After their misdeeds, they consider their cause lost and prefer to

flee. Only rarely do they resist, fight and die with dignity, beaten in an unequal struggle.

Besides, closely related to their fear is a deep sense of alienation from the society in general. The identity cri sis in them constitute a dual alienation. Their

singularity, the height of their aspiration cut them off from the world. The situation results in de~pair, psychic and physical instability. Aggression is innate, an instinctual force that must be channelled properly to ensure the individual's survival. Bigger is not an existential hero as such. He is guided by pulsional violence, not a deliberate and well-thought decisions : he responds to impulses. A real existential hero thinks out before acting. As for Damon, he thinks his violence, but man's actions must be directed toward beautiful values rather than monstrosity. He must affirm positive values that make society progress. We thus reject these

protagonists who violently hurl themselves against the walls that bar them from a life, they know is better life.

ln Damon, the bridge from Bigger Thomas to nihilistic man is traversed. But it is Damon, not Bigger, who is the real monster upon human kind. As a matter of fact, Bigger blunders into murder, Cross skiifully executes it. Bigger's motives are guided by urges beyond his control; Damon's are premeditated, each step weIl

calculated. Bigger desires to create a new identity; Cross desires no less than to create a new world. Bigger wants to share in the Protestant Ethics; Cross will settle only for an ethic devised by himself~ Bigger is the disgruntled reformer; Cross is closer to being a nihilist in the Camus' sense. 1

To my opinion there should be limits and a meaning to our revoIt and actions. There is for man a possibility for an action and a revoIt up to his personal level. Any other enterprise much ambitious reveals contradictions. The Absolute cannot be invented by a single man through History. It is a common achievement of the whole humanity. Màn is able to readjust anything which is wrong in

Creation. ln his highest effort, he can only reduce arithmetically the evils in the world, but injustice and sufferance will always remain and be scandaIs for men.

The "why" of Damon is an everlasting question to be asked by every generation of men. RevoIt will stop with the last man on the earth. Hence, we must leam how to live and die, how to be a man. Otherwise, we are proclaiming a total dereliction for man in a world there is no God to lead his actions. How can we conceive a world where everything is permitted to man? ln this way, it is clear that each man would

make his law and would impose it on the others. Henceforth, humanity would become a tragic theatre where the strongest one devours the weakest one.

é~ 1- "A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing" writes Albert Camus "he simply does not believe in what exists at the

Literature is the conscious or unconscious expression of the author's choices, obsessions and problems. It is a search for a certain inner solution to existence. The heroes are thus chosen according to the views that the writer wants to express; their creation defines and qualifies his originality. Therefore, the heroes usually mirror the experiences of their creator; his scar can be found on each of them. ln the

Throughout the illustration of existentialism in Native Son and The Outsider, we wonder how closely the author identifies with his protagonists or whether they only exist in his imagination. To what extent Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon represent Richard Wright himself? We will find out some similarities and differences between them so as to define Wright's ambivalentI existentialism.

VI-l THE ORIGINS

An understanding of his existentialism begins with an examination of the peculiar hardship that confronted him. in his youth and followed him throughout his life. Richard Nathaniel Wright was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi in 1908. His father was a black peasant who very soon ran off with another woman, leaving to survive an indigent family. Then Richard Wright's childhood

1 The Oxford Advanced Leamers Dictionary defines ambivalent as follows : "adj. having or showing mixed feelings about a certain object, person or situation. "

consisted of a series moves from one southem town to the next, living on various relatives, of part time jobs and sporadic schooling. His youth was marked by

poverty, hunger, repression, violence and fear. He managed to go to Memphis and later to Chicago and to New York, for a new life; he worked at a succession of odd jobs but found little dignity in Negro life. He was then associated with the Communist Party. ln 1946, Wright settled in France, in a self-imposed exile from his native land, travelling periodically to other countries and continents. He died

Wright's racial status, his poverty, the description of his family left ineradicable scars on his psyche and deeply influenced his thought. He was totally obsessed by the traumas of his youth and the possibilities of Freudian

interpretation are tempting. Actions and behaviour reveal the repressed intentions, desires and complex hidden to the conscience. Wright does not have to create the emotional state of his characters, it was the very substance of his childhood, his youth and manhood. The theme of initiation into violence and escape from it is one Wright is obsessed with; it is to recur in his novels. The fear and alienation that characterised the life of Richard Wright are not untypical of the flight of his

heroes. The heroes are not imaginary, they live within him; but that does not mean that aIl his thoughts and whims, their murderous rebellion are also Wright's.

Violence is to be found in his autobiography Black Boy but violence of a much less bloody nature. As a young boy, Richard Wright displays a character which is quite similar to Bigger Thomas's. But Wright is compelled to resort to violence not for the purpose of doing harm, but as a kind of survival. Richard Wright's first use of violence occurs' when his mother sends him out shopping in

town. The boy goes his way mindless of what might happen to him when suddenly he is surrounded by some bad-natured boys who after wildly beating him have left

him half-fainted in the street. Recovering his consciousness, the young Richard sadly and painfully retums home to tell his mother about his ordeal. But she at

once sends him back to the store; the expected battle takes place again. At this time the situation reverses to be in favour of the young boy who leams to defend himself superbly.

Richard Wright inclination to violence, reinforced by his sulky temper, results from the atmosphere of violence created by his parents and relatives. For example, one opportunity which incites his outbreak of violence cornes when Aunt

beaten for what he recognises to be undeserved punishment. Consequently, his reaction is violent: he mns to the kitchen, takes a knife and threatens to kill Aunt Addie if she does not stop bothering him :

"F or a month after that 1 took a kitchen knife to bed with me each night hiding under my pillow

Another opportunity is the desertion of his father which conserves the atmosphere of tension and understanding prevailing in the family. As a matter of fact, Richard Wright in his violent words describes the rougbness, the fear and hatred his father inspires in him and he confesses bitterly:

" If someone had suggested that my father be killed, 1 would perhaps have become interested. ,,2.

world that is devouring him. ln spite all bad habits, he is never really a lost child.

Although he lives in a wretched condition, he never adopts the ethics of his companions in the streets.

Richard Wright's parents especially his mother lead a fanatical religious life fraught with fear and the worship of God. The young Richard is taught to follow scrupulously the religious discipline. We remember his mother's admonishment to ask forgiveness when he deliberately kills the kitten:

forgive me " for I knew not what I was doing and spare my poor life, even though I didn't spare the life of the kitten,,1

But if Richard Wright's relatives and parents find their existence and hope upon religion, Richard on his part resents it strongly. Young Richard finds it hard to cope with the religious atmosphere at home. Early in the moming, he is forced to say his prayer and to eat he must implore the blessing of God. Wright grows

more and more aware of the depersonification the formaI religion exerts upon his people. Faithful to his belief about th~ uselessness of religion, he creates characters in his novels which embody his position. Indeed, Wright's attitude toward religion is a negative one. He says that man's environment can be altered through united and determined efforts with no assistance from the Divine source.

However, it is not religion as such which Wright condemns, but the hypocrisy accompanying Christianity. Considered as a mode of living rather than an institution, religion is not condemned by Wright. Although the Church

preachers talk about the goodness of God, his justice and his love, Wright corne to doubt the existence of God :

"1 had not settl~.d in my mind whether l believe in God or not. Ris existence or his non existence never worried me l reasoned that if there did exist an aH-wise,

aH powerful God who knew the beginning powerful God who knew the beginning and the end, whomelted out justice to aH, who controHed the destiny of man this would surely know that l doubted his existence and he would laugh at my foolish denial ofhim,,2

It cannot be stressed enough that Wright was only discovering how close he had been to existentialism aH his life, how he had lived with dread and despair, and how the circumstances of Black life in America was so bleak and tragic, and fraught with bitter, unrelieved suffering, and absurdity that only existentialist philosophy could give meaning to it. AH his prior life and experiences have prepared him to sympathise with the ideas promulgated by the post-war philosophy of man's terrible independence, existential agony, and social isolation. Ris great achievement in the novel is his application of modem psychology and philosophy to black and white racial patterns and human personality, particularly the inner

turmoil of black personality, and to the black male, who is seen as an outcast, criminal, or marginal man.

From a general point of view, it may be asserted that Wright shaped his characters out of himself. He identifies with his heroes only in so far as they have been influenced and affected by external social forces. ln the progression of the stories in the novels, each protagonist is committed to the social struggle; he acts

both for purely personal motives and social determinism. For example, in Bigger are combined two types of characters : the murderer who kills as an act of personal

As for crimes, despite his violence, Wright does not go so far as to commit murders! The killing of white people remains only in his imagination and subconscience. But equally, he fled out of his free will for a better life. He was not hunted like Bigger Thomas or Cross Damon. At the very most, it seems that he often resorts to escape to show thatit is the only means left to Negroes to solve their problems. Contrary to Bigger who becomes a criminal, Wright emerged from the racial prejudice, poverty, family disorganisation, and inadequate education that afflicted his early years. Inspite of his belief in environmental determinism, Wright himself fulfils his dreams of success against environmental determinism. But

As far as existentialism is concerned, Richard Wright adopts an original attitude. He has never indicated in his novels that it can be an acceptable solution for Black problem. Wright surprises his audience by depicting terror and irrationality. ln his novels, existentialism emerges as his own victim. The other

feels that he should focus his writing upon what he thought to be weak and repugnant in existentialism. He attacks the existentialist way that have given birth to people su ch as Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon. His desire is to change and

improve the human condition and to create a more rational world. He is seeking to explain human suffering outside communism and beyond Christianity. He takes the philosophical side of the atheistic or secular existentialist and moves to the religious position of the agnostic. "1 don't know whether God exists or whether he has anything to do with human suffering ", he said. Wright's answer to the problem of suffering is that aIl life is full of suffering-suffering is part of life. It exists

Cross Damon obviously expresses the anticipated symbolism in Wright's work and is both a spiritual counterpart of Wright and a descendant in Wright's fiction. Wright has delved into the meaning of human existence and the moral explanation for human suffering and senseless pain. But the stressing of mind is more than philosophical, he is moving toward his own world view or weltangschauung. His philosophical odyssey : from Mississippi and folk religion to Chicago and Marxism, to New York and Paris and secular existentialism. His fear and hatred are turned into a definite flight; he becomes an expatriate because of his estrangement from American ways. Wright's years of self-imposed exile in

France from 1947 till his death in 1960 are not years of total withdrawal and isolation. However, Richard Wright could have stayed in his native land to fight and not solve his dilemma by flight for survival. He seems thus to discard and avoid the danger; ensure his own safety and then, from far away to propose uprising for the others.

Speaking of Bigger, his rebel-victim symbol, he affirmed : "...he left a marked impression on me; maybe it was because 1 longed secretly to be like him and was afraid. 1 don't know"IUltimâtely he remained Richard Wright and did not

There is still controversy over Wright's existentialism. Questions about his existentialism and how his existentialism diverges from the Sartrian line are still put for discussion. Native Son and The Outsider are existential novels, not because Wright has adhered to that particular philosophical system, but because he has found that life itself is existential and man need to struggle to wring his destiny. As

"If 1 were asked what is the one, over aIl symbol or image gained from my living that most nearly represent what 1 feel to be the essence of American life, l'd say that it was that of a man struggling mightily to free his personality from the daily and

It is not easy for us to understand Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism and we find him morephilosophical than Wright. We are convinced that Wright's existentialism is mature, growing out of his painful childhood and adolescence and having a 'philosophical basis in his Chicago reading of Dostoïevsky's novels and the complete philosophy of Nietzsche. Wright is a pragmatist, a realist. Writing for

him grows out of his experiences real and vicarious. The real significance of Wright's existentialism is in the wofId of his ideas placed in the context of his times and his human condition. ln his existentialism you will find his personality, his genius, his political significance, his intellectual attainment. There is no way to understand his existentialism, without understanding the keys to his psyche: they are Anger, Ambivalence, Alienation, and Aberration. Driven by anger, alienation, ambivalence and a subsequent aberration, the existentialism of Richard Wright seeks . to remould our violent, war tom, revolutionary world of the twentieth

Wright is neither an atheist nor a believer : he is an agnostic. His early experiences with a black folk religion that is anthropomorphic, fundamentalist, and full of superstitious beliefs and practices do not move him in the least. As a matter of fact, he does not know whether God exists or is immanent in the affairs of men. He is, therefore, a secular existentialist doser to Camus and the religionist

Kierkegaard than to Sartre, the atheistic existentialist. Sartre is also a nihilist reducing aIl existence to a meaningless nothingness; he explains that if God does exists man can never be free, he would be for ever condemned by a priory values already determined before his creation. But Wright does not go that far, despite his

pessimism, tragic view, and negativism. He believe that life or existence could have meaning and purpose if the individual so willed it by his own reason and

determination. Wright develops a conviction that the meaning of living cornes only when one is struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering.

Wright's examination of the philosophy of existentialism from its secular point of view is dearly the basis of his existentialism. He is destined to move further and further away from religious faith and doser and doser to a secular stance. Wright, the agnostic, cannot believe in western Christianity, which preaches love but practises hate, which sends missionary abroad but oppressed the hungry and unfortunate at home. Wright finds this diametrically opposed in his

ln reading Wright one does not quite reach the atheistic crux of secular existentialism. What people fail to understand is not Wright's existentialism, but his ambivalence. As a matter of fact, Wright seems almost aIl as idealistic as he is materialistic in philosophy. His ideas are there fore somewhat contradictory, ambivalent, and twisted. As a black man, he searches more than a racial justice,

of humanity where Blacks and Whites would come together in peace, in racial understanding and human dignity. Mind and body he wanders over the earth

seeking always a common growing for humanity. Somewhere in Marxism, existentialism, he searches and finds an anchor or meaning for his life, never roots. Re accounts for the important role played by communists in Native Son, but he rejects party dogma in The Outsider. Ironically, Wright suggests the need and necessity for rebellion, but for himself, he finds flight imperative. ln France he remains existentialist in his thinking, but he moves more into Pan-Africanism. AlI this proves the ambivalence of the man and exposes his political ambivalence paradox and his twisted existentialism. ln his ambivalent existentialism he cannot avoid his own mistakes, notions, impulses, and human problems, and he has

Among the existentialist writers, Richard Wright stands apart because of the theme he develops in his works, his treatment of the characters and the type of hero he creates. Violence in the form of rape and murder appear in his fiction. The problem is that he is a very angry man and aIl the violence and horror of his stories come out of that anger. Living in a black and white world, hate within and fear without, rebel and victim, rebel and victim, Black nationalist and Red

intemationalist, aIl these contrasts make ambivalence as a natural feeling in Wright. Rence, he is driven by demons of anger, ambivalence, alienation, and

aberration to become the maker of, violent dreams and nightmares, mysterious monsters and grotesque horrors, the fabricator of Bigger Thomas and Cross Damon. Puzzled and bewildered, he is kind of a revolutionary rebelling against society, the Church, the State, and aIl conventional mode ofbehaviour.

It is important to note that Richard Wright is a reservoir and an encyclopaedia of Black humanism. He is a humanist of the deepest and purest dye.

The humanist qualities are there in his search for freedom, peace, human dignity, and for social justice. He stresses on the absurd meaning or existentialist definition

of Black suffering. Like existentialists, he wants freedom but he precises that personal freedom is conditioned on the freedom of the others. Wright finds much

cogency in Cross Damon, but it is a fair assumption that he deplores his moral weakness and irrational behaviour. That is why, we may even suspect that The Outsider is a rejection of existentialism as an adequate way to cope up with life problem.

Perhaps, the main difference between Wright and the other existentialist writers lays in his weltangschauung or worldview and his synthesis of the greatest ideas that have marked the twentieth-century. Wright's weltanschauung is the one which challenges the modem mind. A Marxist-humanist, Freudian and existentialist, an Eisteinian man andPan-Africanist, Richard Wright syntheses in his works the principal ideas of our century.

Recognition ofthis worldview as Wright's weltanschauung is a prerequisite to understand the man' s existentialism. We then understand that existentialism is

part and parcel of Wright's global weltanschauung, and to assess his existentialism 1 we have to place it in that context. Summarising himself his ambivalent existentialism, that we dare calI psychology of lone man, he wrote :

" l'm a rootless man, but l'm neither psychologically distraught nor in any wise particularly perturbed because of it. Personally, l do not hanker after, and seem not to need, as many emotional

attachment, sustaining roots, or idealistic allegiances as most people. l declare unabashedly that l like and even cherish the state of

abandonment, of aloneness; it does not bother me; indeed, to me it seems the natural, inevitable condition of man, and l welcome it. l can make myself at home almost everywhere on this earth and can, if l've a mind to and when l'm attracted to

1 for Wright's existential statement, see White Man, Listen (Garden City, New York, 1957)

a landscape or a mood of life, easily sink myself into the most alien and widely differing environments. l must confess that this is no personal achievement of mine; this attitude was never striven

for... !'ve been shaped to this mental stance by the kind of experiences that l have fallen heir to ,, 1

CONCLUSION

On the whole, the study of Richard Wright's existentialism has brought us as far back as his childhood years. ln the first part of our study, we have tried to trace the basic elements of existentialism. Along with this line, historical evolution and existential principles have been dealt with. Existentialism is a twentieth century philosophy which begins in the ninetieth century with the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, andfhas special echo during the Second W orld War period. The chiefs exponents of modem existentialist literature include Jean-Paul Sartre Albert Camus. The existentialists believe that the individu al is isolated in a world

of indifference, suffering and general hostility : alllife is meaningless and absurdo He exists purely in terms of his own will and reason, and wrings his destiny out of himself.

The other interest of our work focus on Richard Wright's illustration of existentialism in Native Son and The Outsider. An in-depth analysis of these novels reveals the existentialist trends in Bigger Thomas)'historical rebellion and

Cross Damon's metaphysical rebellion. Bigger rebels against religion, against his

, family, against his family, against his companions and black life in general, and against the white society that oppresses him. The specific form that this rebellion

takes are rape and murder, crimes of which Bigger is and is not guilty of. Cross Damon is a black intellectual caught in a web of dreadful accident, but he seizes a fluke of fate to create the kind of life he wants and begins a new existence. He is a thinking man whose existence made him grapple with the ethical and metaphysical problems in the perplexing society.

The last part is concemed with the assessment of Richard Wright's existentialism. Through a critical study, we have brought out the limits of his

existentialist heroes. That leads us to Wright's existentialism which is, in fact, a very ambivalent one. The dominant characteristics of his heroes are crimes and

violence provoked by revoIt. They always stand on the verge of violent impulse to their problems. Their inner world react to an outer hellish world of violence and hatred. We discem in them a high frustration, a tendency of aggressivity, an emphasis on physical insecurity and a doubtful identity. Closely related to their violence is a deep sense of alienation from the society in general. Besides, they are not guided by morallaws or legal implications of their misdeeds. An understanding of Wright's existentialism goes with an examination of the peculiar hardship that confronted him in his childhood. As a matter of fact, his existentialism grows out ofhis painful youth and is mixed with his philosophical reading. To understand his existentialism, you need to understand the man and his psyche fraught with anger, ambivalence, alienation, and aberration.

Richard Wright writes Native Son and The Outsider more to expose man's inexorable struggle to survive in an unfavourable social environment than merely depict existential ideas. Wright's abiding concem through his existentialism is the conflict between the individual and the society. Ris works lay bar man's suffering and longings. The message Wright sends us is quite simple: facing life problems, show indestructible will and determination. Row does the writer himself emerges from the fearful and alienated world described in Black Boy? What are the predominating forces that aIlow him not only to survive, but also to achieve literary distinction? It is certainly his indestructible will and determination.

Throughout his existentialism, Richard Wright is seeking to answer vital questions: the philosophical question of Being or the Idea of God and the Nature

of Man, questions of love and freedom, justice and truth. The real significance of Wright's existentialism lays in the world of his ideas placed in the context of his times and his human condition. Ris body of works reflects his buming desire to make a real contribution to our culture and to aIl mankind. It is in the world of

ideas, in the history of ideas and culture, in contemporary ideas of this ending century, that he has made his immortal contribution.

A-Works by Richard Wright

Wright, Richard. Native Son. 2nd ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1940 Wright, Richard. Black Boy. New York: Harper & Row, 1945 Wright, Richard. The Outsider. New York: Harper & Row, 1953 Wright, Richard. "The Man Who Lived Underground" reprinted in

B-Critical Works on Richard Wright

in Notes ofa Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Baldwin, James. "Princes and Powers", "The Survival of Richard Wright",

Brignano, Carl Russel. Richard Wright: An Introduction to the Man and his Works. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1970.

Shadow and Act. New York: New American Library, 1953. Fabre, Michel. The Unfinished Ouest of Richard Wright. Translated form

in La Rive Noire. Paris: Editions Lieux Commun, 1985. Kinnamon, Kenneth. The Emergence of Richard Wright. Chicago:

Walker, Margareth. Richard Wright: Daemonic Genius. New York:
Wamer Books'inc., 1988.

C-Other Sources

Camus ,Albert. Le Mythe de Sisyphe: Essai sur l'Absurde. Paris: Gallimard, 1942.

Trudier, Harris (ed). Dictionnary of Literary Biography. Michigan: Gale Reseach Inc, 1988. Vol. 76 : "Afro-American Writers, 1940-1955"