The Power of Blackness: Richard Wright Re-Writes Moby-Dick

African American Review, Winter, 1999 by Elizabeth Schultz

Ahab's separation from others is primarily his choice; Bigger, too, chooses to separate himself from others. Convinced of their blindness and of his superior comprehension, with increasing arrogance and contempt, Bigger intentionally allows his defensive wall or curtain to distance himself from other blacks. Wright makes clear to his readers, however, that Bigger's intentional alienation from blacks is related to the social and institutional privileging of whites in all American economic, legal, educational, and political situations. The resulting physical separation, which is a condition in Bigger's life rather than a choice, Wright describes with precision in "How 'Bigger' Was Born":

In Dixie there are two worlds, the white world and the black world, and they are physically separated. There are white schools and black schools, white churches and black churches, white businesses and black businesses, white graveyards and black graveyards, and, for all I know, a white God and a black God .... (510)

In both Native Son and "How 'Bigger' Was Born," Wright indicates that this physical alienation, which results in the psychological alienation from other human beings he defines as a "No Man's Land," is a condition of Bigger's life.

For Melville as well as for Wright, the question of the individual's free will is of paramount importance. From his opening chapter, Melville indicates that, although an individual such as Ishmael may choose to go to sea, "those stage managers, the Fates" (7), also inevitably dictate his course of action. In the Epilogue, Ishmael notes again that "I was he whom the Fates ordained to take the place of Ahab's bowsman" (573). Numerous instances throughout Moby-Dick, all involving diverse characters, reveal a universe in which forces beyond human comprehension or control intersect with individual decisions to shape an individual destiny. [19] Ahab, however, in his refusal to acknowledge any authority, acts out a national agenda of freedom, guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence and re-inscribed by nineteenth-century Emersonian concepts and Jacksonian models. Unlike Bigger, who has internalized his limitations and incompleteness, Ahab has been conditioned to believe in his freedom--he has "been led to think untraditionally and independently" (73). Again and again, he asserts his free will: "'I'd strike the sun if it insulted me'" (164); "'What I've dared, I've willed; and what I've willed, I'll do!'" (168). Repeatedly he denies signs and portents prophesying the disastrous consequences of seeking the White Whale. If he momentarily questions, "'What nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it ... that commands me? ... Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm?'" answering himself that "'we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike'" (545), as the narrative moves toward its conclusion, he rationalizes his actions by proclaiming that he himself has become the agent of Fate. On the second day of the chase, he actually announces, "'I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders'" (561). Ahab's outrageous, hubristic defiance of Fate, interpreted by recent literary critics as indicative of his fascistic or imperialistic tendencies, was perceived by Mumford and other 193 0s literary critics as a grand gesture, an expression fulfilling high human aspirations and elevating a human being to heroic status.