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Showing posts from August, 2018

Educational Naturalism

Throughout Native Son, Bigger makes choices. Many of these choices cause him to tumble down a continuous spiral to his eventual trial and execution for the murder and supposed rape of Mary Dalton. While reading this book, I thought at many times to try to call out to Bigger, and give him a bit of guidance because I could see where some of his actions were leading. I realized that I was using education that I had received in my schooling years that Bigger was not fortunate enough to have, and that Bigger's environment hadn't prepared his foresight enough to prevent him from making several fatal mistakes in a row. So is the true culprit Naturalism? I believe that Wright was trying to achieve the same response I gave to seeing Bigger make those mistakes. I believe that his Naturalist "lab" (for lack of a better term) was designed to show how much education can play into the choices we make. And I do not mean only the education you receive in schools. If Bigger had seen