“We, like sleep-walkers, have participated so dreamlike and thoughtlessly.” (383, Max) Ideology, were a class controls the working class, in what they believe is in the best interest of themselves. In the case of “Native Son” by Richard Wright, the newspaper and press control the working class’s way of thinking towards the case. Why? Because they make the slander believable, they are able to sway people to their side. Soon you start believing everything they say.
Is it possible, after everything the press has said and down to receive a fair trail?
Did Bigger receive a fair trail? Could he have? “How can I, I ask myself, make the picture of what had happened to this boy show plain and powerful upon a screen of sober reasons, when a thousand newspaper and magazine artist have already drawn it in lurid ink upon a million sheets of public print” (384 Max) What do you do when everyone’s mind is jaded? You can’t make them see the truth because to them what the press says in the truth. Others use the press for ideology. They give there “stand” on something and the people who read will be most likely to follow his opinion.
David Buckley took advantage of it to sway the people to vote for him. He used the emotions of the people and the paper to get people to see were he “stands” on this trial and for possible “brownie points” with the public for the upcoming election. “What else can you expect from a gang like that? I’m in favor of cleaning them out lock, stock, and barrel. I’m of the conviction that if you got to the bottom of Red activity in this country, you’d find the root of many an unsolved crime.” (Newspaper Article quoting Mr. David A. Buckley 342)
“Dare I, deeply mindful of this body background and race, put his fate in the hands a jury (not of his peers, but of an alien and hostile race!) Whose minds are already conditioned by the press of the nation; a press which has already reached a decision as to his guilt, and in countless editorials suggested the measure of his punishment” (384 Max)
“Today and last night eight thousand armed men combed cellars, old buildings and more then one thousand Negro homes in the Black Belt in the vain effort to apprehend Bigger Thomas, 20-year-old Negro rapist and killer of Mary Dalton, whose bones were found last Sunday night in a furnace.” (Newspaper Article 256) Rapist and killer, the idea placed into our heads by
But are the papers manipulating us? Or are they siding in what we already believe in?
Some could use the argument that we make our own opinion and that the press does not control us, that we just merely have the same opinion as them. “Consider the mere physical aspects of our civilization. How alluring, how dazzling it is! How it excites the senses! How it seems to dangle within easy reach of everyone the fulfillment of happiness! How constantly and overwhelmingly the advertisement, radios, newspapers and movies play upon us!” (394 Max) The society we live in today, how can the articles in the newspapers, or the commercials on TV not sway us? That is their job. They make something desirable and so believable that we cannot help but to want it! Even if we don’t feel that way to begin with, we will when they are done with us.
“Maybe we wanted him to do it!” (395 Max) Maybe we did want him to kill her. Or maybe it was just the people who print the articles, or the people at the newspaper stands selling the tainted papers. Ideology, the way they control us so they can get profit off of our poor judgment. Bigger never stood a chance, no one did.
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