Reflection 1 Annie

This book, so far, is really weird. The character Bigger especially. It's like he's bipolar or something. His emotions seem far too wild and they change and swing without any order or reason. Without even being provoked, he pulls the knife on what's his face, that one guy and refuses to back down. It was really creepy. Then he's all, oh, I'm going to be calm down. When the Dalton's daughter is introduced, his opinion about her keeps changing. First he hates her, then he likes her, then he hates her again. I'm just on pg 86 or so, right after he smothered her with the pillow to get her to shut up, and that part was weird.

So I don't like his character very much.

Maybe, though, the character is supposed to be like that. I'm not sure about this, but wasn't the stereotype about blacks back then was that they were all over the place and emotional and stuff like that? Maybe Wright created Bigger to be a stereotypical black - even if that stereotype was wrong. He did it to prove that the idea about blacks was wrong and weird and unexplainable.

The Communist bit is convoluted too. When we were reading Huck Finn, we talked about the Marxist approach with things having to do with money and class and the like. There kind of seem to be two ways to look at this book from the Marxist standpoint. One, Bigger thinks that the Communists are bad and evil and not to be trusted. So Richard Wright could be trying to say the same thing and is trying to write a message against Communism. But at the same time, Wright could also be trying to say that Communism is a good thing. The first two Communists we meet are the daughter of Mr. Dalton - Mary, right? - and her friend, Jan. Both of them are young, friendly, nice, and likable. They want to help those who are in a less fortunate situation than them, like the blacks. So it seems like Wright is saying that Communism is, in fact, the way to go because it's fair for everyone and every race, and they people there are more friendly and better than the people who are Capitalists. So it seems to be a little bit of a conflicting message.

All in all, I haven't quite decided what I think of the book yet other than the fact that it's weird.