Are These Books More Similar Than We Think?

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has his back. It takes Bigger to kill someone and going to jail to realize that he had people and that his actions affect all of his loved ones. Bigger shows that he is oblivious to his family and his actions when his mother is nagging on him about how if he doesn’t change, he will one day end up where he will not want to be and that he needs to take on more responsibility (Wright 13). Bigger finally realizes that he really did have people while he was somewhere he did not want to be; sitting in a jail cell thinking about his whole life. Bigger is even loved by Buddy throughout the whole book Buddy has his back for everything and he was willing to try and get Bigger out of jail for it. Everyone just loves everyone in both books. When comparing two books, the reader will notice similarities and the similarities present in these two books were religion and love.

Along with similarities, there comes differences. In the novel Native Son, shame plays a huge part in Bigger Thomas’ life. Bigger is finally having time to think about his actions and what they caused. When Bigger finally realizes that he has no power or hope left, he states that he is paralyzed with shame (Wright 280). Shame is what kills Bigger. His emotions were like a rollercoaster, but this emotion was one of the most prominent. All he could do is think about his actions and sit in his jail cell. Imagine what that can do to a person? It is almost worse the death. Shame was not a theme that was presented in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, but the theme family was. Family plays a big part in Maya Angelou’s life. Maya was never alone. She always had someone in her family who had her back, even though she moved around. When she was living in the junk yard, her friends there were like another family to her. She was terrified when she found out she was having a baby, but her family was right there, giving her advice and helping through everything. One night she was laying in bed sleeping and her son was laying in her arms. She was always scared to hold or even touch her baby. Then her mother walked in and told her that she didn’t have to think about doing the right thing, if she was for it, it would happen (Angelou 246). It’s times like these that people cherish the most. Maya had a great family. On the other hand, Bigger Thomas did not. His family was always fighting and they were also separated most of the time. His mother tried to make things better, but she just couldn’t. Differences are presented in almost everything we read or do. The differences between Native Son and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings were shame and love.

The themes in the book Native Son better depict the civil unrest. In the book Native Son, there was more than just discrimination against blacks. There was discrimination towards the communists and Jews. If one were a Jew and you were communist, it was even worse. They protrayed the hatred that occurred during the book so well. During the trial, Buckley was really rude and did not care about Bigger’s feelings and went over board during the trial to show that Bigger was a bad person. Emotion was another big part of the civil unrest and Richard Wright portrays it really well. Bigger Thomas has a really hard time while he is sitting in the jail cell thinking about what he had done. It was tearing him apart. Through all of that he had to deal with all of the white people hating on him which made it even worse. There was burning of a cross by white people, rude comments said by white people, and beatings done by white people. The themes of this book better showed the civil unrest because it showed Bigger’s emotion and how he felt about the whites. It showed the civil unrest on not just blacks, but communists and Jews also.

Native Son shows the civil unrest better than I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Native Son were historical fiction books that had only a couple of the same themes. Both books dealt with racial issues. If we are not careful, history will repeat itself and what happened in both these books will become present today.

Works Cited

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks,

2009.

Wright, Richard. Native Son. New York: Harper