Bigger, however, was not an exclusively black phenomenon. Wright himself declared that the turning point for him in his understanding of social reality—“the pivot of my life”—was his discovery of the ubiquitousness of Bigger: “there were literally millions of him, everywhere.” White Biggers abounded in response to the same fundamental environment that had helped sponsor, in situations that involved blacks, the secondary conditions that produced black Biggers. These conditions reflected the failures of modern civilization—the death of genuine spiritual values and traditions, the harshness of
...more
