Sam K's Swaggy Statements

          As I was reading about the lobotomy (pseudo or not) performed on the narrator in Chapter 11, I was reminded of the brutal history and relation between white doctors and black people, specifically female slaves. The chapter begins with the narrator being forced to swallow an unknown medicine. After losing consciousness, he wakes to white doctors and nurses surrounding him as he undergoes a series of electrical shocks. As the shocks are being administered, one of the doctors argues that these primitive methods would not be used on someone that, “were a New Englander with a Harvard background?” (236). They are rebutted by another doctor that claims the narrator will, “experience no major conflict of motives, and what is even better, society will suffer no traumata on his account” (236). Another doctor adds, “Why not castration, doctor?” (236).  The doctors continue to call the narrator “boy” and laugh at his suffering, exclaiming, “They really do have rhythm, don’t they? Get hot

   Bigger Thomas is arguably one of the most controversial characters in literary history, and rightfully so.      The way that Richard Wright writes Bigger Thomas contradicts the depiction of protagonists in most novels I have read. Typically as a reader, your feelings towards the protagonist may slightly change as the book and character progress, but ultimately, your opinion of the protagonists of the novel usually improves or stays at the same level as when you started the book. However, in this novel, my opinions of Bigger fluctuated throughout the entire novel on a frequent basis. At times I was upset with Bigger, felt disgust and disdain towards him, and was overall disappointed in him. Other times, I pitied him, rooted for him, and felt some sense of relatability with him.      In the beginning of the novel and our discussions of it, I honestly didn’t think that Bigger was that unlikeable of a character. Every action, thought, and feeling of Bigger in Book One: Fear was either