Poor Bigger Thomas in Native Son
was so disconnected, no control over his own life, a poor black man living in a rich white man’s world. Since ancient times, people have been committing atrocities when it’s the only thing they can do to grasp some semblence of control over their own lives.
My favorite such story is that of Euripides’s Medea. It’s a supremely powerful tale of a woman so bitterly and irrevocably scorned by her man that she kills her own children to get back at him. Every time I hear about a story in the news where a woman has murdered her babies, I think of Medea and the utter desperation that would drive a person to do such a thing.
Contemporary writers like Amy Tan and Toni Morrison have also tackled the subject of women who would stoop to such desperate measures. There are tales of slave women in the US who murdered their own babies, whether out of mercy or rebellion over the men who controlled them.
Of course, then there’s people like the Boston Strangler, henpecked wimp of a man who murdered women all over town because the women at home so thoroughly controlled him.
Wow. I didn’t mean to get so heavy. That’s what Richard Wright does to me.
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on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 9:28 pm and is filed under US and Canada, meanderings.
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