It Was Very Modern, I Suppose

I was perusing my bookshelves the other day, and came across the book Native Son. I read this book as part of my Modern American Literature class in the fall. That was such a great class, and I was really looking forward to it because I love modernism.

I hadn't heard of Native Son before, but I was very intrigued when our teacher warned us that it is a very disturbing novel and we shouldn't read it before bed. I mean, that's not the kind of thing your professors usually tell you in an upper level English class. It must be very disturbing. I took it as a personal challenge, because, as you know if you know me well, I am not easily disturbed.

**Spoiler alert- Sort of. I am going to give away some of the novel's action, but it's all stuff at the beginning, and, it is a little gruesome.**

Well, I start reading (in the evening, of course), and I was really enjoying it, so I easily read through the first hundred pages- through the murder.

Here's the premise: Bigger Thomas is an young African American who lives in the slums of Chicago and has had some trouble with the law. He ends up being offered a job as a sort of chauffeur for the Dalton family- a very well-off white family. On his first night on the job he is asked to drive Mary, the daughter of the Daltons, to an evening class at the local college. But, turns out Mary really just wants to meet up with her communist boyfriend. The communists are all for equal rights, so Mary and her boyfriend are thrilled to be hanging out with a Black man. They get totally drunk, and Bigger feels really uncomfortable the whole time.

When they come back to the Dalton's house, Mary is too drunk to make it up the stairs to her bedroom, and Bigger is freaked out and sure he is going to lose his job. He carries her up to her room, and lays her on her bed. This novel takes place at a time where he is pretty much a dead man if he gets caught in her bedroom because of the strong racial prejudices. Well, as soon as he puts her down, Mary's blind mother comes into the room. She can't see Bigger, obviously, but she's trying to talk to Mary. If she realizes Mary is drunk she'll come in and figure out that Bigger is there, so he puts the pillow over Mary's face to keep her quiet. Mrs. Dalton assumes she's asleep and leaves, and Bigger removes the pillow and discovers that he has accidentally suffocated Mary. In a panic, Bigger shoves her body into a trunk and carries her downstairs to dispose of the body. He passes the ginormous furnace, and decides to put the corpse in there. But, she doesn't fit... so he hacks her head off with an ax. Yes, you can now see why my professor warned us.

So, I read all of this, and I was not really all that disturbed. It was intense, yes, but it wasn't going to keep me from sleeping or anything. It really only freaked me out the next morning.

I slept on the couch that night, and when my mom left for work that morning, she woke me up and told me I could go back to sleep in her bed. So, I did. I'm right on the edge of sleep when I my dad comes into the room for a second before he leaves for work and tosses a pillow onto the bed. He didn't realize that I was there, and he tossed the pillow right onto my face. And then everything I read the night before came rushing back to me, and I was sure someone was trying to suffocate me. I screamed; a good, blood-curdling scream, and threw the pillow across the room. I think my dad almost had a heart attack. I don't think a book's ever had that kind of effect on me before.

And that, my friends, is why we listen to our teachers.