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Jaydon Geyer

C. Wynkoop

ELA 10-01

22 January 2019

Motifs in Wright’s “Native Son” and Miller’s “Death Of A Salesman”

The motifs in these two pieces are present in order to further the readers A motif is

defined as “a usually recurring salient thematic element (as in the arts) especially: a dominant

idea or central theme” “Motif.” (Merriam-Webster, Merriam-webster,

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/motif). There are many motifs in both of these books. The ones

discussed will be, respectively; death, emotion, and fear for Native Son and business, state-of-

mind, and family for Death of a Salesman. These motifs recur often throughout the books, and

are important to the storyline and themes of the books.

Native Son

The first theme is Death in Native Son. This book starts with an underlying tone of death

when Bigger Thomas kills the rat on page ten. This is a foreshadowment of both Mary’s and

Bessie’s death. Every time Bigger kills a person (or a rat) some of Bigger’s humanity dies as

well. When Bigger is sentenced, he knows he is to die in imprisonment. According to Wright,

“Bigger understood every word; and he seemed not to react to the words but to the judges face.”

(three hundred eighty-one) This shows that Bigger does not care about the sentencing itself, just

how the people around him feel about it. He shows no remorse for his actions.
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Remorse is another motif within this story of Native Son. When Bigger kills bessie on

page two hundred twenty-three, he does not become overcome with grief or feel any emotion. He

only thinks about having to get rid of the body. This is the same as when Bigger kills Mary on

page 85. He does not feel bad towards Mary or her family for the death. Bigger only comes up

with a plan to conceal the fact that he is the culprit. He also tries to blame it upon another group

of people. These people are the communists. Bigger does this because he knows that Mary

associates with this group through her secret lover, Jan. In the second part of Native Son, titled

Flight, Bigger does show slight remorse towards Jan. “At that moment he wanted to walk out

into the street and up to a policeman and say, ‘No! Jan didn’t help me! He didn’t have a damn

thing to do with it! I-I did it!’” (two hundred twenty-nine to two hundred thirty) Wright is

showing that Bigger is not psychopathic, and does indeed express emotions. Bigger does not

want Jan to go to jail for a crime he did not do. When Jan is arrested however, Bigger does not

react. Bigger only feels fear of being caught by the police. Which is another motif within native

son.

Fear is in all of us. It is not an emotion but an instinct. It leads to our fight or flight

reaction. That is the reason Richard Wright titled the first two parts Fear and Flight. Fear is what

drives Bugger to kill both Mary and Bessie. For Mary, it is the fear of getting in trouble with his

employers for letting Mary stay out so late and for not taking her to the destination originally

agreed upon. When Bigger kills bessie, it is out of fear that she will be captured and and that she

will tell the police about all that bigger has done. So he feels as if he must kill her. This lessens
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the fear about the police finding out about Mary’s death. However, Bigger’s level of fear has

increased, because of the fact that he has another victim and has a greater chance of being

caught, seeing as how Bigger is one of the only, if not the only links between Mary and Bessie. It

is with this second murder, the murder of Bessie, that Bigger seals his fate. He does not realize

this and has no fear of these consequences, only the fear of being captured. As previously

mentioned, he does not show emotion towards his actions, but is only fearing the outcome.

Death of a Salesman

The first motif in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” is business. According to the

Oxford-English Dictionary, business is defined as “A person's regular occupation, profession, or

trade” “Business | Definition of Business in English by Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford

Dictionaries | English, Oxford Dictionaries, en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/business.

However, people also consider people dealing with something personal as their “business”.

When Willy Loman is described as a businessman, it could be argued that he is simply dealing

with a lot in his personal life. He is often described as a bad businessman. However, if the

second definition is taken into account, then this description is now untrue. Everyone has their

own way of dealing with things personally. Although it is unfortunate that Willy’s solution in the

end is suicide, it is a solution nonetheless. If the first definition is used, then the argument that

Willy is a bad businessman is now valid. He does not sell the things he is supposed to, and is

even laid off because of his fragile state of mind.

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Willy Loman in a very fragile state of mind, but does not want to admit it or get the help

that he should. Instead he lets himself slowly slip away from his wife and two sons. But even

more than that, he lets himself slip away from society, and eventually reality. When he slips

away from reality, he is also losing his sense of saneness. Once he loses his grip on reality and

saneness, he no longer has a mind to be in any state, good or bad. The title of this book is Death

of a Salesman. The title does not speak only of him as a being, but as an intellectual. Once willy

starts “losing his mind”, the title also speaks of this. For the death is of Willy’s sanity as much as

it is his existence. The phrase “losing his mind” is best applied here. When a person either

commits, or contemplated committing, suicide, it is often seen by others as a sign of mental

illness, or bad mental health. These two things are different in the sense that a mental illness is an

actual diagnosis, and is more oftenly a doctor’s choice of words, while bad mental health is more

often a civil observation as opposed to a doctors diagnosis. For Willy loman, there was only bad

mental health, and there was no doctor involved to prescribe him any medicated help. Another of

Willy’s traits is stubborness, which contributes to the fact that there was not a doctor to help

Willy, because of the fact that Willy did not share with his family his problems. An example of

Willy’s loss of sadness is when he repeatedly visualizes and communes with his old friend

named Ben. This is a normal thing, except that Ben is not actually there. Willy left his family in a

state of grief and sadness. However, before Willy died, he left money to his family.

Family is the third and final motif in Death of a Salesman. When asked what family

meant to them, 4 out of 5 people said closeness, or a variation of it. However that is not the kind

of family that is shown throughout this piece. Family is simply a group of people that share
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genetic code or that are related through marriage. The family that is given to the reader is one

that is breaking apart and dysfunctional. The family is only dysfunctional and not completely

destroyed and separated. It only becomes completely broken when Willy puts himself on the

death bed. This is the point where Biff, Willy’s son, tells Willy that he is not coming back home

ever again. Some say that this is what drove willy over the edge, but his previously mentioned

fragile state of mind had the most to do with it. Willy’s wife, Linda, sees the changes in willy

and sees him start to drift apart from the family. However she does not tell Willy to stop or do

anything to coax him back towards the family, or even towards Linda herself. By doing this, she

is only enabling the splitting of the family. She is not doing anything to try to fix this breaking

bond. When she finally realizes what's happening, and tries to mend the family, it is too late. Not

only for the family, but for willy. This is the point in Death of a Salesman where the title

becomes a complete thought, for this is when willy kills himself.