Naturalism Feels Unnatural.

That's probably not true, by definition, but it does feel frustrating and confusing. In Native Son, we run into aspects of naturalism throughout the book. Naturalism says that "natural forces predetermine a character’s decisions" which make them act a certain way. However, it almost feels wrong to label Bigger's crimes as "natural". Do his circumstances and environments really make that much of an impact? If you had two people, with the same circumstances and upbringing, would they really turn out just the same? Twins don't. If you lived the life of Bigger Thomas, would the story play out just the same? ...Who knows. 

Coming to terms with the idea that you have no sense of control over your life doesn't seem like the best experience to go through. Yet, Bigger felt like this at the end of Native Son, simply accepting that this is how his life will end. He had no choice. He did all that he could do. 

But wait! He's not guilty. In fact, he didn't do anything. He just lived his life and all of his actions were a natural response to the political, environmental, and social events that happened in his life. You can't fault him for what's natural because you can argue that he can't control that. We view this as "natural" because it's just a progression of everything that's come before that very moment for Bigger - a ripple effect. It's all predetermined for him. How is he going to change what "natural forces predetermine" for him?

We discussed in class that naturalism can cause you to have a very dim view of free will; you're helpless in what you can do. Let's put you in this Naturalism box. You affect nothing because life would continue without you. Life doesn't need you in it at all. You're just a figure that's meant to do certain things, but you don't have conscious control over those actions because a higher power of nature is guiding you through every step of the way. We see Bigger struggling with the effects of this so-called "naturalism" throughout the book because he doesn't seem to be able to control his actions. He's aware of his thoughts and emotions, just not why they're developing in that way. We see this when he first meets Mary in person; she annoys him very much but he can't seem to put a finger on what it quite is. He doesn't fully know what's going on or where those thoughts come from, and even if he did, there's nothing he can do about it. And the same thing applies to everyone else, including you. 

Could you even say that the legal system didn't fail him? If you frame it this way, the legal system is a character, and it isn't the system that's at fault - it was the faults of all the people who enforced the system, including all the events that led up to that point and every action that caused the system to be built that way. There's a deeper foundation to blame for the legal system's awfulness, so you should target those things instead, but before you target those things, you need to target the foundation of those things, and so on and so forth. Is that naturalism? Max argued that Bigger wasn't at fault for his crimes because his life set him up for this path. Is the legal system not at fault because it was set up for failure? This theory doesn't work. Yet, it does because... Naturalism? It's confusing but naturalism always wins because how can you argue with natural forces that can predetermine everything? You can't. You give up and accept defeat, just like Bigger Thomas when he was set up for this life by naturalism.