NATIVE SON: CHAPTER ONE

The first chapter ends when bigger slams the door on page 12. The chapter should be called “TRAUMA”. Bigger hates his family because of their poverty and suffering and because he feels there is nothing he can do to help them. He believes that he cannot afford to let himself feel their shame and misery too strongly without also feeling the urge to kill himself or someone else. He has cultivated a façade of outer toughness to protect himself from the unbearable pressure he feels as a result of his family’s social position.
Bigger’s mother sings a spiritual while preparing breakfast—a song that annoys Bigger. She begins to prod Bigger about a job he has been offered with a man named Mr. Dalton. She tells him that if he takes the job, the family will be able to move to a nicer apartment. If he does not, he will lose his relief money and the family will starve. Resentment builds in Bigger, as he feels that his family is tricking him into giving up. Frustrated by his narrow range of choices, he storms out of the room and into the building’s vestibule, where he broods while watching the traffic through the window. And that’s where the chapter ends.