The Interpretation Of Bigger’s White Dream In Native Son

As the forerunner of the second Black Renaissance in America, Wright opens a new chapter in the African-American literature with his representative work Native Son which is regarded as the watershed of the Negro protest literature. Deemed as the milestone of the black American literature, Native Son exposes racial discrimination in the American society through recounting the story of Bigger Thomas.As a native son of racism-ridden society, Bigger serves to shed light on the predicament black people are trapped in and the disillusionment of the white dream. Bigger who lives in the cruel and merciless society embraces white dream. Mass media is dedicated to dehumanizing blacks and showing off whites’ wonderful life. The whole black race is haunted by the unfair treatment in laws. Mass media and the unjust law serve as the hotbed of Bigger’s white dream which mainly includes Bigger’s dream of self-realization and asserting his manhood. According to Freud, the dream is the fulfillment of wish cherished by human beings whose all activities are driven by sexual energy, libido. During the course of libido, the child at the genital stage will have the tendency of indifference and rivalry with his father under the compelling of the Oedipus complex. Bigger’s manhood dream is the outcome of the psychic drive, his Oedipus complex.The racial society denying all the possibilities of blacks to fulfill their dreams should be answerable for Bigger’s dream disillusionment. Besides, Bigger himself ought not to pin the hope on having sexual relationship with Mary, the white girl, to live out his dream of entering into the white world. Mary is proved to be the false medium of Bigger to fulfill his dream. Besides, the blind actions practiced by two conflicting races frustrate the realization of Bigger’s white dream. Blacks’ s white dream is doomed to fail under the interaction of internal and external factors.