Native Son #3

"She doubled up with laughter. He tightened with hate. Again she was looking inside of him and he did not like it" (Wright 81). Mary's goal was to simply get to know Bigger, in order to feel as though she was becoming more familiar with the kind of people she wanted to help with her Communist ideas. She had begun feeling as though she was achieving this, while Bigger just continued to hate her more and more. This is a simple quote, but I think it shows a lot about the differing mentalities of these two characters. Mary was a curious, rich, white girl who was willing to befriend someone considered to be below her, a black man. On the other hand, Bigger was not nearly as open to this idea. He had grown up being familiarized of the boundaries between blacks and whites, and by how Mary and Jan were treating him, they were crossing those boundaries. If he were to interact with them in the same way he would with fellow black people, he would also be passing these same boundaries, and he would not allow himself to do this. He was not going to let Mary think she had figured him out.