Bright and Morning Star

by Richard Wright

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Racial Violence

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Wright's story, "Bright and Morning Star," opens with Sue anxiously watching out the window for her son. She fears he might have been detained and beaten by local authorities. Although Sue’s son is not engaging in any illegal activity, he is attempting to organize a group of oppressed individuals, primarily black people. Alarmed by the potential power of organized African Americans, white officials have resorted to terrorizing the black community with threats of physical abuse, torture, and even death. One of Sue’s sons has already been assaulted and imprisoned for refusing to disclose the names of those who joined the Communist Party.

Sue herself faces racial violence when a group of white men invades her home without warrants or even the courtesy of knocking. Once inside, they help themselves to her food and hurl insults when she challenges them. One of the men throws food in Sue’s face and taunts, "How they taste, ol [b——]?" When Sue retorts, another man responds, "You need somebody t teach yuh how t be a good nigger!?" Moments later, the sheriff, aiming to enforce his idea of how a black person should behave towards a white person, punches Sue in the face. As she falls, he kicks her.

In the story's conclusion, Sue arrives with a sheet to retrieve her son’s body. The sheriff remarks, "Looks like them slaps we gave yuh learned yuh some sense, didnt they?" When Sue refuses to persuade her son to reveal names, the sheriff orders his men to crush her son’s legs with a crowbar. To verify the legs are broken, one man lifts a leg, which drops "rearward from the kneecaps." "Just lika broke sparrow wing," the man observes. Shortly after, the sheriff threatens to rupture the son’s eardrums. One of his men affirms, "he knows how t do it, too!" Another man adds, "He busted a Jew boy tha way once!?"

These passages aim to provide a realistic depiction of the harsh conditions African Americans endured. Facing a constant threat of racial violence from both legal authorities and enraged mobs, many black individuals were compelled to endure relentless humiliation and degradation at the hands of white people.

Martyrdom

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Death is a recurring motif in most of Wright’s works. In ‘‘Bright and Morning Star,’’ death is depicted as a form of martyrdom. Sue takes pride in her sons' resilience and silence. She is confident that her sons will never reveal the names of those involved in the Communist Party. At one point, Sue asserts, ‘‘Po Sug! They sho musta beat the boy somethin awful! But, thank Gawd, he didnt talk! He ain no weaklin, Sug ain! Hes been lion-hearted all his life long.’’ Sug is Sue’s son, who has been imprisoned for a year.

Sue becomes captivated by her sons’ bravery, and when the sheriff threatens to beat her, she thinks, ‘‘There was nothing on this earth . . . that they could not do to her but that she could take.’’ Shortly after, the narrator observes that Sue is prepared to sacrifice her sons, knowing they were as good as dead once the sheriff had them. She wanted the sheriff and all the white people to understand that ‘‘they could not get what they wanted by bluffing and killing.’’ She then exclaims, ‘‘N yuh ain gonna never git it!’’

Wright’s use of the word ‘‘exultingly’’ is significant. The term suggests a sense of rejoicing and triumph. It reveals Sue’s (and thus Wright’s) feeling of offering her sons’ lives in the struggle for freedom. Her sons will die, but their deaths will...

(This entire section contains 281 words.)

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symbolize the courage needed for others to confront their white oppressors without fear. Their deaths are neither random nor in vain. They have suffered and died for a cause. As Wright’s final words in this story highlight, these martyrs are ‘the dead that never die.’

Communism

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The ideology of the Communist Party provided hope to Wright. It was through the Communist Party that he connected with other radical intellectuals. Additionally, his first stories were published in Communist publications. The party’s promise of strength through the unification of workers was highly appealing. Workers’ rights and financial security were privileges Wright had never known. The vision of socialism, which the Communist Party promoted, inspired Wright to imagine a future where all people would experience equality. It was toward these ideals that Wright’s works embraced the theme of socialism, especially as depicted in ‘‘Bright and Morning Star,’’ which presented the idea that strength could be achieved if white and black people united in a common cause.

Maternal Love

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While one could argue that sacrificing one’s children for a cause is a distinct expression of maternal love, there is no doubt that Wright’s protagonist, Sue, deeply loves her children. Her existence seems to be fueled by her devotion to them. She constantly worries about their safety. She prioritizes their needs above her own. She even shifts her life philosophy to better resonate with her children’s beliefs. By the conclusion of the narrative, she essentially embodies her sons’ spirit, embracing their fervor and sacrificing her own life to safeguard their mission of organizing their community when circumstances prevent them from doing so. Her final words, “Yuh didnt git whut yuh wanted,” suggest to the reader that she ensured her sons did not perish in vain.

War and Racial Conflict

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“Bright and Morning Star” is the fifth and last story in Wright’s collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1940), whose title is an obvious allusion to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-1852). If, as President Abraham Lincoln suggested, Stowe’s novel started the Civil War, then Wright’s story continues the saga of war, specifically the war between blacks and whites. Divided into six sections, the story uses communism as the racial battleground.

Victory in Death

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If Sue’s murder were the end of the story, “Bright and Morning Star” might be viewed as a tragic tale of the powerful destroying the powerless. This, however, is not the final note in this last story in Uncle Tom’s Children. On the contrary, Sue dies victorious, finally realizing that what she had viewed as the “white mountain” of the race that had persecuted her was now toppled through her action. She lies on the ground, in her last moments of life, without struggling; she is at peace, experiencing an intensity of life in her last moments. She realizes that the white men may think that they have killed her, but in reality, she has actually relinquished her life before they could take it from her, thus controlling her own destiny. When her lips move soundlessly, mouthing the words “yuh didnt git yuh didnt yuh didnt,” Sue becomes one with her bright and morning star.

Betrayal

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The theme of betrayal is at the heart of “Bright and Morning Star,” a story whose title suggests hopes and dreams and aspirations—all of which are destroyed by both human and ideological means. In the first case—that of human betrayal—the obvious culprit in this story is Booker, the white turncoat who joins the Communist Party to identify its members, thereby ingratiating himself with the sheriff and elevating himself in the southern community in which he resides. Booker’s name is clearly an allusion to Booker T. Washington, whom Wright and others have viewed as a black man whose accommodation to white precepts betrayed his own race. Wright’s Judas-like Booker accomplishes his plan of betrayal, only to be shot by the woman who most symbolizes the values and humanity that he denies.

Ideological Betrayal

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Perhaps more subtle than this human betrayal, however, is the ideological betrayal of the Communist Party. Johnny-Boy explains to his mother that the party will connect blacks and whites, destroying economic distinctions so that blacks can obtain equality and justice by working alongside more privileged whites. Just as Wright demonstrates the naïveté of that dream in Native Son, his autobiographical novel published the same year as Uncle Tom’s Children, and in his autobiography Black Boy (1945), so he suggests in “Bright and Morning Star” the destructive idealism inherent in the Communist Party. Betrayed by that idealism, both Johnny-Boy and his mother are victims of a Judas that is not merely one person—Booker—but actually a deceptive vision that blacks and whites can be united by the ideological tenets of communism.

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