674
PARTISAN REVIEW
public progress, a progress so heavy with complexity, so bewildering
and kaleidoscopic, that he dare not pause to conjecture on the
darkness which lies behind him; and by the nature of the American
psychology which, in order to apprehend or be made able to ac–
cept it, must undergo a metamorphosis so profound as to be literally
unthinkable and which there is no doubt we will resist until we are
compelled to achieve our own identity by the rigors of a time that
has yet to come. Bigger, in the meanwhile, and
all
his furious kin,
serve only to whet the notorious national taste for the sensational and
to reinforce
all
that we now find it necessary to believe.
It
is not
Bigger whom we fear, since his appearance among us makes our vic–
tory certain. It is the others, who smile, who go to church, who give
no cause for complaint, whom we sometimes consider with amuse–
ment, with pity, even with affection- and in whose faces we some–
times surprise the merest arrogant hint of hatred, the faintest, with–
drawn, speculative shadow of contempt- who make us uneasy; whom
we cajole, threaten, flatter, fear; who to us remain unknown, though
we are not (we feel with both relief and hostility and with bottom–
less confusion) unknown to them.
It
is out of our reaction to these
hewers of wood and drawers of water that our image of Bigger was
created.
It
is this image, living yet, which we perpetually seek to evade
with good works; and this image which makes of all our good works
an intolerable mockery. The 'nigger,' black, benighted, brutal, con–
sumed with hatred as we are consumed with guilt, cannot be thus
blotted out. He stands at our shoulders when we give our maid her
wages, it is his hand which we fear we are taking when struggling
to communicate with the current 'intelligent' Negro, his stench, as it
were, which fills our mouths with salt as the monument is unveiled
in honor of the latest Negro leader. Each generation has shouted be–
hind him,
Nigger!
as he walked our streets ; it is he whom we would
rather our sisters did not marry; he is banished into the vast and
wailing outer darkness whenever we speak of the 'purity' of our
women, of the 'sanctity' of our homes, of 'American' ideals. What
is more, he knows it. He is indeed the 'native son': he is the 'nigger.'
Let us refrain from inquiring at the moment whether or not he actual–
ly exists; for we
believe
that he exists. Whenever we encounter him
amongst us in the flesh, our faith is made perfect and
his
necessary
and bloody end is executed with a mystical ferocity of joy.
