“The human brain is coded for compassion, for guilt, for a kind of empathic pain that causes the person inflicting harm to feel a degree of suffering that is in many ways as intense as what the victim is experiencing.” ( ). When looking into the different brain functions and how that impacts a killer, it is important to talk about the orbitofrontal cortex and the temporoparietal junction. The orbitofrontal cortex is associated with moral sensitivity, moral judgments and making choices about how to behave. The temporoparietal junction deals with the moral load, processing the sense of agency and the act of doing something deliberately and therefore owning the responsibility for it. These two parts of the brain have huge impact on what decision …show more content…
In the story of Native Son, Wright features the two worlds of poor America and white wealthy America. This takes place in 1930s Chicago and starts with the life of a young black man in a white world. White oppression cornered Bigger into a life of constant distress and restraint that eventually would overtake him and his personality. Bigger struggled with a split personality, especially within his own race. In his home life he is poor and part of a gang that robs people but he finds a job working for Mr. Dalton, a prominent white businessman. He hates his blackness and that is obvious when Bigger takes Mary and her boyfriend around “black Chicago” and Bigger doesn’t want to be seen with them. Eventually after a night of drinking with Mr. Dalton’s daughter, Mary Dalton, he tries to rape her and accidentally kills Mary. He didn’t view his crime as an act of hate towards Mary, but rather as an act of nature. Although this horrible tragedy was an accident, the time period suggests the killing was not only worth while to him, but it was meaningful. “A meaning which others did not see and which he had always tried to hide.” says Wright. Although the actual strangling of Mary was not intentional on Bigger’s part, he chose to view it as if it were. Wright suggests that Bigger thought the killing of Mary was what was right. In the action of the crime, Bigger is shocked about killing