Tuesday, February 23, 2021

the last book I ever read (Native Son by Richard Wright, excerpt nine)

from Native Son by Richard Wright:

The preacher’s words ceased droning. Bigger looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. The preacher’s face was black and sad and earnest and made him feel a sense of guilt deeper than that which even his murder of Mary had made him feel. He had killed within himself the preacher’s haunting picture of life even before he had killed Mary; that had been his first murder. And now the preacher made it walk before his eyes like a ghost in the night, creating within him a sense of exclusion that was as cold as a block of ice. Why should this thing rise now to plague him after he had pressed a pillow of fear and hate over its face to smother it to death? To those who wanted to kill him he was not human, not included in that picture of Creation; and that was why he had killed it. To live, he had created a new world for himself, and for that he was to die.



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