Notes to a Native Son
...iend, a runaway slave, he must decide whether to help his friend or “go to hell”(Twain 217). The reader can now see how strong of an effect the white southern society has over its younger generation. There are numerous counts of irony in both novels. Widow Douglas “attempts to teach Huck about religious principles while owning slaves”(Grant 2759). The reader can see irony because the bible’s teachings preach that all people are created equal. Obviously Widow Douglas has looked over this lesson. The Daltons are also ironic in that they make a fortune out of exploiting blacks, even though they seem to be committed to helping “his people”(Wright 70). There is a sense that maybe they maintain this pretense in an effort to avoid confronting their guilt, that they are unaware of, and their own deep-seated racial prejudices. Blindness is a reoccurring symbol that illustrates the relationship between races. On a symbolic level, this serves as a metaphor for the vicious circle of racism in the American society. Mrs. Dalton’s inability to see Bigger causes a “feeling of freedom from a weird spell”(Wright 86). Her blindness also represents the inability of Americans as a whole to see black Americans as anything other than the embodiment of their media enforced stereotypes. Even Bigger, a black man, is blind to the white race. ...