Richard Wright uses the concept of fear in at least three ways within his fiction which reflect similar utilizations of this concept within the fiction of Stephen Crane. Mainly, he follows Crane in the depiction of paranoiac fear. Secondly he uses fear in Native Son in much the same way that Crane does in The Red Badge of Courage. Finally Wright makes use of a more metaphysical concept of fear in two of his works ("The Man Who Lived Underground" and The Outsider), and this type of fear strangely resembles that which Crane used in "The Open Boat."

In Wright's story "Big Black Good Man" and in Crane's story "The Blue Hotel," the protagonists both share the same type of fear—namely paranoia. The Swede's lack of knowledge of the true nature of the West or of the brutishness of the American frontier causes him to have certain expectations about the people he meets in the Palace Hotel in Fort Romper, Nebraska. His "dime store novel" preconceptions cause him to see everyone in the hotel except the Easterner as willing to murder him with little or no provocation. Because of his prejudgments ("I suppose there have been a good many men killed in this room"),¹ the Swede eventually brings on his own death—not in the Blue Hotel, but at the hands of a polished gambler who happens to be carrying a knife to protect himself from bullies like the Swede. Various of the Swede's comments illustrate his paranoia:

"Oh, I see you are all against me. I see." ("B. H.," p. 321).

"I am going to be killed before I can leave this house!" ("B. H.," p. 321).

"I won't stand much show against this gang. I know you'll all pitch on me." ("B. H.," p. 336).

The Swede sees everyone in the hotel as his enemy, yet there is little in the narrative to justify his fear of anyone but the hotelkeeper's son. In addition, the Swede does not know that the violent days of the Old West have almost totally disappeared from this area and that Nebraska is basically filled with agricultural communities whose notorious gamblers are now family men. He is living in a world of make-believe, where hotelkeepers are supposed to poison their guests and where everyone is out to mock or destroy the "tenderfoot." Only in the Swede's mind is everyone out to get him, but this fantasy brings on his death just as it almost does that of the hotelkeeper in Wright's "Big Black Good Man."

As in Crane's story, Wright's protagonist creates a fantasy world of fears based on unwarranted expectations. Having been a night porter in Copenhagen, the white Olaf Jenson had had somewhat limited opportunities to come into contact with blacks, except for sailors now and then; and none of those sailors were like the big black man that this story portrays.² When this "black giant" enters the Copenhagen hotel, Olaf, who is working behind the desk, is filled with unreasoned fears about what will happen to himself. Olaf, like the Swede, begins to recall the myths he has heard; but in this case Olaf is falling prey to a "pulp fiction" conception of blacks. At first, like Crane's Swede, he puts up a "front" to show this huge black man that he is unafraid of him: "Olaf moved about quickly, pulling down the window shades, taking the pink coverlet off the bed, nudging the giant with his elbow, to make him move as he did so.… That's the way to treat 'im.… Show 'im I ain't scared of 'im. …"3 The reader will recall that the Swede is always aware of how he looks to the people he fears most. His statements about his not being a tenderfoot, his pride at winning the fight, and his attempt to force the gambler to drink, all show this reaction. In both the case of the hotelkeeper and of Olaf, this is the kind of arrogance which is a compensation for fear. Later, even though the night porter finds this customer's request for a woman and something to drink disgusting, he cooperates and meets both of these demands. But as Lena, a white prostitute, leaves the "black giant's" room, Olaf s hates and fears begin to fill his thoughts as they had in the case of Crane's Swede:

… he could not shake off a primitive hate for that black mountain of energy, of muscle, of bone; he envied the easy manner in which it moved with such a creeping and powerful motion; he winced at the booming and commanding voice that came to him when the tiny little eyes were not even looking at him; he shivered at the sight of those vast clawlike hands that seemed always to hint of death.… ("B. G. M.," p. 81)

Also in the same manner as Crane's Swede, Olaf considers covering up his fears by voicing them belligerently to his antagonists. (The Swede actually does voice his fear and hatred; whereas, Olaf only considers saying what he feels.) After the fifth request by the black guest for Lena and whiskey, "Olaf was about to make a sarcastic remark to the effect that maybe he ought to marry Lena, but he checked it in time.… After all, he could kill me with one hand he told himself" ("B. G. M.," p. 82).

On the day that this gargantuan black man checks out, he demands that Olaf stand up. As Olaf arises he thinks, "This evil blackness was about to attack him, maybe kill him" ("B. G. M.," p. 83). His fears seem confirmed as the black man reaches up and puts his hands around his neck. Olaf is so afraid that he is about to the that he wets his pants and pleads, "Please don't hurt me" ("B. G. M.," p. 84). But after shunting aside Olaf's remark, the black man exits without harming him, or so much as threatening to do so. For a year Olaf dreams of vengeance on this black man by means of a "white shark," but finally he appears to have forgotten his adventure when his black customer returns and once again encircles Olaf's neck with his fingers. In reaction to this renewed assault, Olaf is about to shoot what he thinks is a black assilant when the black man suddenly pulls out the shirts he has been measuring Olaf for. Although the result of the paranoia of Wright's and Crane's main characters are different, it is still obvious that their "fears" are similar.⁴

In Native Son, even though most of Bigger's fears are justified, some of them stem from a deep-seated—seemingly unrealistic—paranoia. This again shows Wright using fear in the same manner that Crane had. As a black youth brought up in an extremely racist environment, Bigger's fear-filled reactions are often appropriate for assuring his survival. However, when Bigger's fears lose all but the faintest relationship to the situations that he is involved in, they become paranoiac and a part of the forces that destroy him. At the beginning of Book I, Bigger considers robbing a store whose owner is white. Bigger's exaggerated fear of pursuit by the white world gives the reader some feeling of the extent of his paranoia:

They [Bigger, G. H., and Gus] had the feeling that the robbing of Blum's would be a violation of ultimate taboo: "It would be a trespassing into territory where the full wrath of the alien white world would be turned loose upon them; in short, it would be a symbolic challenge of the white world's rule over them; a challenge which they yearned to make, but were afraid to." (N. S., p. 18)⁵

The assumption that the police will try harder to catch any Black who robbed a white-owned store in the ghetto is logical, but the feeling that "the full wrath of an alien white world would be turned loose upon the three of them" is an exaggerated and hence a paranoiac reaction that a racist society has implanted in Bigger's mind, and the mind of many other Blacks. Later when Bigger takes a gun and a knife to the Dalton home, he shows exactly the sort of fear which no longer distinguishes among enemies (paranoia). It is this inability to sort out individuals or even types among white people in Book I of Native Son that causes Bigger to hate Jim and Mary for their treatment of him instead of merely scoffing at the "liberal" gestures that they make toward him. If white racism had not caused Bigger to see all whites through a fog of fear, he might not have been so afraid of being caught with the Daltons's daughter in her room. Certainly he would have been fired by the self-righteous Daltons, but there is no reason why he should have been charged with rape, simply because of the Dalton's concern for their daughter's reputation.

This pattern of paranoia continues on into Books II and III of Native Son.⁶ Wright's repeated usage of this type of fear in Native Son has also caused Edwin Berry Burgum to see part of Bigger's fears in terms of paranoia. Since his remarks give a kind of independent substantiation to my own interpretation of Bigger's conduct, I shall include them at this juncture. He suggests the following: "His [Bigger's] uncertain groping for some valid avenue of self-fulfillment before the murder now [after Bigger's arrest] gives way to the authority of his excitement. He enters a world of paranoiac fantasy in which his acts of frenzy seem to him not so much the clever concealment of his initial mistake as the unfolding of a grandoise plan of conquest."⁷

Pursuing the comparison I have made to "Blue Hotel" one step further, one may note that Bigger tries to act tough just as the Swede did in order to hide his fears. As I pointed out earlier, this is the typical compensation mechanism of the paranoiac. In addition, as with Crane's protagonist, paranoia is the main cause of Bigger's death. The main characters of four other of Wright's works ("The Man Who Lived Underground," The Outsider, Savage Holiday, and Lawd Today) often illustrate paranoiac fears; but the examples I have given so far are sufficient to show the similar use that Wright and Crane make of this syndrome.

Yet the paranoiac fear of "Blue Hotel" is not the only Crane-like use of fear that occurs in Native Son. Wright also portrays fear in a way that is very similar to the fear one finds in The Red Badge of Courage. As a basis for my study of the analogous type of fear one finds in Native Son and The Red Badge of Courage, I should like to cite Daniel Weiss' article, '"The Blue Hotel': A Psycho-analytic Study," which contains an excellent analysis of fear and the reactions fear causes as these phenomena occur in The Red Badge of Courage. Early in his analysis Weiss suggests three ways in which Henry Fleming reacts to his fears. I have found that each of these three reactions to fear also occurs with Bigger Thomas in Native Son. Because Henry Fleming is horrified by the prospect of going into battle, he sublimates these fears by viewing war in terms of the past or as a game, it is compared to a "Greeklike struggle" and the army is seen as a "blue demonstration." This flight from reality to avoid the terrors of what one is actually afraid of is also found in Bigger who sees the whites he fears in terms of a game called "White" in Book I of Native Son. Secondly, Weiss finds that Fleming avoids confronting the terror within himself by projecting his fears on others like Wilson. What else is Bigger doing than this when he tries to make Gus look like the one who is afraid to rob Blum's store? Moreover, Weiss suggests that Henry looks for refuge in various "parent figures."⁸ Again it is easy to see that Max, and, to a lesser extent, Jan serve this same role for Bigger in Native Son.

Continuing his analysis of Crane's novel, Weiss suggests that Henry chooses both what Weiss calls the "flight to activity" and the "flight to passivity" in order to cover up his fears. "The flight to activity involves the primitive logic of becoming the thing or person one fears and then proceeding to intimidate others. Reassurance is bound up with the obsessive display of fierceness, seeming is being, pretensions are genuine. At such moments tensions clamoring for discharge convert fear into anger, hatred, and aggression."⁹ These ideas so aptly describe what Wright was doing that they seem as if they had just come out of a critical study of Wright's novel. Note how the following statements by Edwin Berry Burgum parallel Weiss' idea of the "flight to activity" as applied to Native Son:

Bigger kills the rat that has been frightening the women folks, and then frightens them the more by flaunting its dead body in their faces. His courage is that overcompensation for fear called bravado.

Knowing that he cannot learn to fly an airplane, his helplessness creates an inner state of fear which (as it has been transformed by the healthy impulse of courage into bravado) sets up the direct motivation of hatred, and transforms what might have been a healthy social activity into petty thievery. But, to the uneducated boy, hatred for the whites is too remote and turns inward. It vents itself upon his family with their misguided notion that decency is rewarded, upon his black neighbors from whom his gang steals, upon the gang for the pettiness of its objectives, and upon himself for his inability to attain more grandoise ends.¹⁰

Here in an analysis of Native Son are precisely the same notions of the intimidation of others, the "display of fierceness," and fear being converted to "anger, hatred, and agression," that Weiss uses to discuss The Red Badge of Courage.

Not only does Weiss' idea of "flight to activity" fit Bigger's actions in Book I, it also sheds light on his actions in Book II as Bigger is forced to face up to the consequences of his accidental murder of Mary. Rather than collapsing because he is now what he has always wanted to avoid becoming, a murderer and a rapist in the eyes of white society, Bigger decides that the murder of Mary is the foundation for a new life that he can create for himself. Because his fears are greater than they have ever been before, he willingly accepts the fact that he is a murderer (at least he does so in his thoughts), and he even suggests that he looks forward with great anticipation to being able to tell white society of his deed after his inevitable capture. This is an enormous change from the Bigger who, at the beginning of Book I, "knew that the moment he allowed what his life meant to enter fully into his consciousness, he would either kill himself or someone else. So he denied himself and acted tough" (N. S., p. 14). Even though this first "flight to activity" through acting tough failed because fate put Bigger in a room with a drunken girl and her blind white mother, Bigger has not learned enough not to try another "flight" from his fears. In his new role as a murderer, Bigger is able to intimidate the whites who have always struck terror into his heart. He does this both to the Daltons in the ransom scheme and to the Communists (all of whom are white in Bigger's mind) in his attempt to blame them for Mary's murder. But this "flight" does not work any better than the wall of toughness he uses in Book I; so that when the pressures get too great his fear resurfaces as hate, and he kills Bessie. Thus it is clear that the pattern of analysis Weiss works in both Book I and II of Native Son.

The remainder of Weiss' treatment of Red Badge of Courage gives us an excellent tool for understanding Book III of Native Son. Weiss suggests that the second way that Henry reacts to fear is through a "flight to passivity." "The flight to passivity is describable in terms of Henry Fleming's readiness to accept protection, to yield rather than advance, to depend on the 'cheery man' who leads him back to his bivouac, …"¹¹ During Book III of Native Son, Bigger too is looking for protection—for something or someone to help him understand his life and to aid him to face his certain death. He even lets Reverend Hammond talk to him in the hope that this man will be able to help him; but Bigger finds out that religion can help him only to face death while it will not help him to really understand his own life. Then as Jan talks to him, Bigger starts to sense that this man holds the answer to both his queries, but Jan's talk with him is interrupted by other visitors. Later when Max talks to him and, even more importantly, lets Bigger talk, he decides that this man may be able to serve his needs for "protection" just as well as Jan could have. Afterwards when Max speaks so eloquently in his defense in court, Bigger is almost sure that he can help him with both of his problems. Although I do not feel that Max holds an answer for Bigger, it is still revealing that Bigger is willing to depend on him. Still it is clear that Book III may be seen in terms of what Weiss calls a "flight to passivity."

Richard Wright uses "fear" in one other way that Crane does. In "The Open Boat" the correspondent's unexpressed fear at the end of the story is not of death so much as it is of something that he comes to feel is just as essential. The experience of the correspondent on the open and uncaring sea had given him a chance to be an "interpreter" and brought him an insight into life that he had never had before. This insight is exemplified by his new understanding of the verse "a soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers, …" as being "stern, mournful, and fine."¹² Once the correspondent has this new knowledge, he has to confront the possibility of his inability to communicate what he knows, and the inability of society to understand what he has found out. Perhaps even the other two survivors will not understand. This fear is as true to him as the fear of death is to Henry or the Swede. This more metaphysical type of fear is shared by at least two of Wright's characters. When Fred Daniels (of "The Man Who Lived Underground") comes out of the sewer, he goes almost immediately to the police. He wants to communicate the nature and the content of his experiences below the city. No longer is he afraid of being falsely accused of murder. The reality he has seen must be communicated even if it costs him his life—it is more important than his life. As Fred tries to explain what he saw, his depiction seems almost surreal—human language is not a sufficient vehicle for conveying this reality. In addition, society, as represented by the police, is unwilling to heed his message ("You've got to shoot his kind. They'd wreck things.").¹³ Discussing this story, Ronald Ridenour comes to just this evaluation of Fred Daniels' fear. It is, he writes, "not a fear of death but a fear that his knowledge will not be heard, will not be heeded because of its totally alien nature."¹⁴ Likewise, Cross Damon (of The Outsider) is filled with a fear that man-kind will not be able to see either the mistakes he has made or to understand the truth that he and others like him bring to the world. As he dies, he tells Houston about his anguish in the following terms:

"I wish I had some way to give the meaning of my life to others.… To make a bridge from man to man.… Starting from scratch every time is… not good. Tell them not to come down this road.… The real men, the last men are coming.… Somebody must prepare the way for them.… Tell the world what they are like.… We are here already, if others but had the courage to see us "{Outsider, pp. 439-440).

Clearly Crane's correspondent, and Wright's Fred Daniels and Cross Damon have a common desire to be "interpreters," but they fear that their answers will fall upon deaf ears.

Wright then uses fear in at least three ways that are reminiscent of Crane. This similar use of fear by both authors certainly suggests some influence, whether conscious or unconscious, of Crane upon Wright.

¹ Stephen Crane "Blue Hotel," The Red Badge of Courage and Four Great Stories by Stephen Crane (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1964), p. 320. Hereafter all citations will be given in parenthetical entries.

² It is interesting to note that both Crane's protagonist and Wright's hotelkeeper are Scandinavians.

³ Richard Wright, "Big Black Good Man," Eight Men (New York: Pyramid Books, 1961), p. 80. Hereafter all citations will be given in parenthetical entries.

⁴ Indeed, it is also worth noting that the paranoia in Crane's work is tied to the experience of an alien environment, while it is connected with experiencing an alien race in Wright's work.

⁵ Richard Wright, Native Son (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), p. 18. Hereafter all entries will be given in parenthetical entries.

⁶ Typical examples of paranoiac reaction in Book II of Native Son include: Bigger's fear that his voice has changed since the murder, p. 97; Bigger's excessive fear of whites, p. 109; Bigger's concern over Bessie's questioning, p. 129; Bigger's fear that Britten is part of a plot to trap him, Bigger's guilt-filled dream in which he sees his own head severed from his body, p. 156; Bigger's pulling a gun on Jan, p. 162; Bigger's fear of the furnace (he will not clean out the ashes because of this fear), p. 183; Bigger's fear of the white cat, p. 190; and Bigger's murder of Bessie in order to save himself, p. 221.

Typical examples of paranoiac reactions in Book III include: Bigger's fear that Max and Jan are using him, p. 288; Bigger's fear that Reverend Hammond's gift of a wooden cross was an attempt to trap him, p. 313; Bigger's fear that Max is trapping him, p. 321; Bigger's driving Reverend Hammond away and his throwing coffee at a white priest, p. 386; Bigger's fear that Max has betrayed him because he is about to die.

⁷ Edwin Berry Burgum, "The Promise of Democracy in Richard Wright's Native Son" in The Novel and the World's Dilemma (New York: Russell and Russell, 1963; rpt. in Richard Abcarian, ed., "Native Son": A Critical Handbook (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Company, 1970), p. 118.

⁸ Daniel Weiss, "The Blue Hotel:" A Psychoanalytic Study in Stephen Crane—A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Bassan (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1967), p. 155.

⁹ Weiss, pp. 155-156.

¹⁰ Burgum, p. 117.

¹¹ Weiss, p. 156.

¹² Stephen Crane, "Open Boat," The Red Badge of Courage, and Four Great Stories by Stephen Crane, p. 209.

¹³ Richard Wright "The Man Who Lived Underground," Eight Men, p. 74.

¹⁴ Ronald Ridenour, "The Man Who Lived Underground: A Critique," Phylon, 31, No. 1 (1970), p. 57.