Native Son: Book 3

He was not so much in a stupor, as in the grip of a deep physiological resolution not to react to anything.

he longed to stop those tears and that anger because he knew that they were futile, that the people who stood along the wall back of him had the destiny of him and his family in their hands.

He proved an alibi and he’s free.

“He didn’t have nothing to do with it,” said Bigger, feeling a keen desire on the man’s part to have him implicate Jan.

What aroused your suspicions that something had befallen your daughter?

“Owing to the peculiar nature of this crime, and owing to the fact that the deceased’s body was all but destroyed, I deem it imperative that you examine one additional piece of evidence. It will help shed light upon the actual manner of the death of the deceased,” the coroner said.

“Your Honor,” Max said, “after long and honest deliberation, I have determined to make a motion in this court to withdraw our plea of not guilty and enter a plea of guilty."

The counsel for the defense claims, and would have this Court believe, that the mere act of entering a plea of guilty to this indictment should be accepted as evidence mitigating punishment.

I shall tell them that our courts, swamped with mawkish sentimentality, are no longer fit instruments to safeguard the public peace!

But the question may be asked, ‘If this boy thought that he was somehow wronged, why did he not go into a court of law and seek a redress of his grievances? Why should he take the law into his own hands?’

This boy’s crime was not an act of retaliation by an injured man against a person who he thought had injured him.

My voice may sound vindictive when I say: Make the defendant pay the highest penalty for his crimes! But what I am really saying is that the law is sweet when it is enforced and protects a million worthy careers, when it shields the infant, the aged, the helpless, the blind and the sensitive from the ravishing of men who know no law, no self-control, and no sense of reason.

Had he begun to feel his duty toward himself and his family? No! Those were not the considerations that drove this rapacious beast from his den into the open! He consented only when his mother informed him that the relief would cut off their supply of food if he did not accept.

He heard the steel door clang shut and he knew that he was alone. He did not stir; he lay still, feeling that by being still he would stave off feeling and thinking, and that was what he wanted above all right now.

When tired of mulling over his feelings, he would say to himself that it was he who was wrong, that he was no good.