Riggins 4
Lisa N Riggins
Lakeya Jenkins
English 102-02
28 September 2014
Casting Judgment in "Big Black Good Man"
In our everyday lives, we as normal human beings cast judgment upon someone without even realizing we are doing so. In most cases we do this without even knowing anything about the person or people we are judging. Richard Wright's "Big Black Good Man" is a good example of this. The story takes place in Copenhagen, Denmark where there are many different kinds of people that come in and out of the town. It is a place that is common for sailors on freighter ships to come to, normally late at night looking for somewhere to sleep and wanting two things most all men want; women and whiskey. Olaf Jenson, one of the two main characters who works at a waterfront hotel in Copenhagen, is automatically judgmental of a new comer named Jim simply because of his appearance.
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As soon as Jim walks into the hotel where Olaf works, he immediately focuses on nothing but the way Jim looks. "He was staring at the biggest, strangest, and blackest man he'd ever seen in all his life" (Wright 209). To Olaf, Jim was not even a person because of how big and black he was. "â¦Well, he didn't seem human" (209). Because of how much bigger Jim was compared to everyone else Olaf knew, he felt Jim's only purpose of being there was to belittle him. "He felt as though this man had come here expressly to remind him how puny, how tiny, and how weak and how white he was" (209).
Just because of Jim's size and dark skin color, Olaf...