(I will be concise in efforts to redeem myself for the lengthy and rambling qualities of my last post, which were excessive for the reader in hindsight...sorry!)
Before moving away completely from Native Son, I would like to juxtapose the first and last images in the book and to make some conclusions about the somewhat bizarre parallelisms. The book opens with an onomatopeiaic imitation of an alarm clock that "clanged" (3) and closes with "the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut" (430). Wright's focus on the unnatural, metallic sounds of the door closing is potentially to highlight an obvious metaphor for the end of Bigger's life. His focus on the alarm clock's incessant "tinny ring" (3), if we allow for a bit of interpretive rubato, serves to hint that Bigger has so little free will that even an inanimate alarm clock has the upper hand. Also highlighting Bigger's lack of control and power in the first scene is the fact that he is within "a narrow space between two iron beds" (3). This image has an illuminating parallel to an image elicited at the book's closing, when Bigger "held on to the bars" of his prison cell (430). Presumably, Wright shaped these similarities to emphasize the idea that ultimately, Bigger's life before prison and murder was just about equivalent to his life a few hours before death. Neither gave him rights, control, free will, safety, or any peace of mind.
Wow--I've never noticed this verbal echo before. Bigger more than once compares his life to "being in jail" even before he's literally in jail, and when he is imprisoned he says something to the effect that it only makes literal how he's been feeling all along. It also underscores the fatalism that characterizes Wright's narrative--the alarm clock that wakes him on this fateful day anticipates (and ultimately leads directly to) the jail doors clanging shut on him on his final day.
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