Bigger Thomas is portrayed as the product of an injurious environment. He lives by fear and invokes fright in others. Unlike
outwardly docile blacks who attempt to cope with their insecurities by clinging to religion or escaping into alcoholism, Bigger is a rebel, a so-called "bad nigger," whose very name rhymes with the epithet most used to vilify his race. His own
mother calls him worthless and wonders aloud why she birthed him. She would have preferred him to be more fatalistic, less antisocial. Bigger is programmed to fail but not stoically. The education that he receives from books, magazines, and films mockingly reveals a world impossible for him to enter. He is in limbo—no man’s land—and feels like a red-hot iron is being thrust down his throat.
From the opening scene in his broken family’s Chicago ghetto apartment, when he is awakened by the harsh ring of an alarm clock and then has to stave off a fearsome attack from a huge black rat, Bigger is engulfed in fear (the title, appropriately, of book one). His mother’s relief administrator has arranged for him to be interviewed by a wealthy philanthropist (and slum landlord) in need of a chauffeur. Bigger’s fear intensifies as he enters this unfamiliar white world. His first assignment is to drive heiress Mary Dalton to a college lecture. Bigger’s discomfort turns to alarm when Mary has him pick up her communist boyfriend Jan and, instead of going to the university, tells Bigger to take them to a South Side soul food establishment. Mary wants to be his comrade, but Bigger knows in his heart that the situation is fraught with danger, that black men have been killed for associating too closely with white women. Bigger’s fear comes to a climax back at the Dalton mansion. Mary is too drunk to get out of the car by herself and so Bigger carries her to her room and puts her to bed. Suddenly, Mary’s blind mother enters the bedroom. In panic, Bigger places a pillow over Mary’s head and accidentally kills her. To make his action even more heinous, he then cuts off her head and stuffs her body into the basement
furnace.
Forced into flight (the title of book two) by the discovery of pieces of bone and an earring among the ashes in the furnace, Bigger becomes a hunted animal, forced into such monstrous acts as the killing of his girlfriend Bessie. Branded a murderer and rapist by the press, he is the object of a massive manhunt. Only by an act of violence has he ceased to be invisible and insignificant in the eyes of the white world. Escape proves to be impossible, however, and his flight ends with his capture atop a roof.
In captivity Bigger’s fate (the title of book three) appears to be sealed. As the state prepares for a speedy trial, he lies mute on a prison cot and refuses food or drink. He faints at his inquest and spurns his family minister. What transforms his fate and redeems his humanity are a series of conversations that Bigger has with Max, his communist attorney. He confides that killing Mary gave him a brief feeling of freedom. Max has Bigger change his plea to guilty and asks the court for a mitigation of punishment on the grounds that Bigger’s actions were a part of an instinctive mechanism. Judge Hanley is unmoved, and Bigger goes to his death with a bitter smile on his face.