What are Bigger's initial feelings towards Mary and Jan in Native Son, and why?
It would be an understatement to say Bigger is made uncomfortable by Mary and Jan. The initial reason for this, on the surface, is that he is supposed to be driving Mary to the university, and she changes the plans on him, so that Bigger is forced to do something not on the up and up. But a deeper cause of his discomfort is the way Mary and Jan behave toward him. The attempted familiarity with which they act throws him off balance, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He might have expected them to treat him in a stereotypical fashion, coldly ordering him about, which would have been even worse, of course, but would still have been the comportment of white people Bigger would have been familiar with. Instead, their attempt at kindness and intimacy, if that’s what it is, backfires.
Based on what he has...
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seen in his life to this point, Bigger has little reason to believe Jan and Mary are sincere in their behavior to him. The whole situation is acutely embarrassing, especially because of their obviously condescending manner, despite their apparently good intentions. Jan and Mary begin to talk about “the Negroes” as if Bigger isn’t even there, asking each other “do you know any Negroes” and similar things as if discussing some kind of scientific study. It increases Bigger’s resentment and his wish that he were somewhere else, anywhere but in a car with clueless people.
In Native Son, how does Bigger feel being close to Jan and Mary?
I think that Wright does a good job of bringing out how fundamentally uncomfortable Bigger is with Jan and Mary. From the moment, Jan rebukes social custom and drives to the shared dining experience at Ernie's Chicken Shack, Bigger is completely uncomfortable. The fact that Jan and Mary insist that he eat with them in public and that Bigger's girlfriend sees him and starts to talk with him only add to his discomfort. The challenge Bigger finds is that to be socially relegated and maligned creates an understanding of where boundaries and parameters lie and where they need to be respected is something that he has lived with all his life. Jan and Mary insist that those be shed in an instant, something that creates a complete sense of confusion within Bigger. At the same time, it is difficult to realign personal codes of conduct reaffirmed by social punishment in so quick of an instant. Adding to this is the collision of roles that he feels in terms of how he is to behave in public with Jan and Mary and Bessie, Bigger's girlfriend. There is a collision of titanic proportions in terms of how Bigger is "supposed" to act and how he can act and this impacts him on both gender and racial levels. It is for this reason that the movement of Jan and Mary on a level of such close proximity causes a challenge for Bigger in terms of recognizing how he needs to act, how he should act, and how he wants to act. Given how Bigger himself is maturing and developing, such massive change is challenging for him to navigate. This is something that the consumption of alcohol worsens, leading to a really disastrous element at the end of the section.