Rhetorical Analysis
Native Son is a fictional novel written by Richard Wright which is set in the 1930’s. The main character is Bigger Thomas a troubled, hopeless young black man, but when he tries to do what’s right and get a job, it turns out to be the one thing that resurrects the ‘’corpse’’ which America thought was dead. Bigger is hired as a driver for a young rich white girl named Mary Dalton who belongs to a white rich family, who seem to be sincere in their intent to help black people, but Bigger finds himself in a situation that has been waiting for him all his life, when he kills Mary Dalton. The true underlying issues are told when Max is saying his final remarks to the jury, he tries to persuade them to think deeper and to recognize that Bigger alone is not at fault for the crime he committed. Richard Wright uses metaphor, simile and parallel structure to illustrate to America that segregation and exploitation of any group of people is detrimental to society.
Richard Wright uses metaphors to elaborate his point that constant degradation and segregation of any group of people will ultimately impact the whole of society. Towards the middle of the speech Wright uses an extended metaphor, to show that the product of constant marginalization and mortification is like a corpse who knows nothing but hatred and mistrust,
‘’But the corpse returns and raids our homes! We find our daughters murdered and burnt! And we say, ‘Kill! Kill!’ But, Your Honor, I say: ‘Stop! Let us look at what we are doing!’ For the corpse is not dead! It still lives! It has made itself a home in the wild forest of our great cities, amid the rank and choking vegetation of slums! It has forgotten our language! In order to live it has sharpened its claws! It has grown hard and calloused! It has developed a capacity for hate and fury which we cannot understand! Its movements are unpredictable! By night it creeps from its lair and steals towards the settlements...