Thisshort story written by Richard Wright, taking place in the mid to late 1900saround 1950s. From the title itself “Big Black Good Man” the reader cansomewhat deduce the given theme from the obvious flaws throughout theexposition.
From the local knowledge of the time, being this “Big Black GoodMan” isn’t such a good thing as racism and social profiling were runningrampant through this period of time, where Jim the sailor is the epitome of intimidationin Olaf’s mind. Throughout the short story, there were many times to where themention of his skin or color was brought up, or bringing up some type of issuethat the main character Olaf had even though he somewhat claimed himself tohave no racial preference or bias, this is proven to be wrong as Olaf describesJim “Too big, too black, too loud, too direct, and probably too violent toboot…”. Which is completely non-parallel to his previous statements, which isutterly ironic in the since that the title of the passage is “Big Black GoodMan”. Thelate 1950s and late were overflowing with bigotry not just in America, and thephysically intimidating nearness of a hulking, strong male of black skin with athick wad of money would legitimately urge some matter of stereotyping insocially detached place like the world Olaf occupies. At the point when Jimplaces his hands around Olaf’s neck out of the blue, one can’t accuse the lastto react with fear. At the point when Jim returns a year later, again puts hishands on Olaf’s neck, however uncovers that his enthusiasm for Olaf’s neck wasconstrained not to strangulation but rather to estimations for speciallydesigned shirts, Olaf’s reaction enlightens the degree of his astonishment infinding this physically forcing individual is really a not too bad person whonever exhibited a risk to the doorman’s prosperity. Jim’s reaction to Olaf’sperception that this black man is a “Big Black Good Man” is amusingas in Olaf is stunned to find such an individual exists.
He is so permeatedwith cliché perspectives of blacks that he has expected from the begin that Jimmust be a criminal. How could such a person as Jim not debilitate. Wright’sstory, however, uncovers that Jim is, actually, a great individual, an amusingdisclosure for the short story reader who accepted resolution or falling actionfor something else.
