Dalton sends Bigger home for the day and Bigger visits his girlfriend, Bessie. Bigger suggests that the last time he saw Mary, she was with Jan. Dalton has noticed that she’s left many of her new clothes behind, which her mother finds strange. Though Mary was supposed to take a train to Detroit that day, Mrs. Dalton is worried about where her daughter is. He feels like he’s actually done something that nobody else made him do, so he commits himself to his course of action.

Bigger’s act fills him with a sense of purpose for the first time in his life. He returns to his home on the south side of Chicago to catch a couple hours of sleep. He has to cut her head off with a hatchet to fit her body in the furnace but finally, he manages to get it done. Now afraid that he’ll be charged with murder, Bigger burns Mary’s body in the basement furnace to hide what he has done.

Afraid that she’ll catch him in the room alone with a white woman, Bigger covers Mary’s head with a pillow to keep her silent and accidentally smothers her to death. Dalton, comes to the door to see if her daughter has made it home safely. But at that moment, Mary’s blind mother, Mrs. Alone in the room with her, he’s aroused. She comes on to him when he is bringing her to her room. Late that night, Bigger has to help Mary up to her room because she’s too drunk to stand up by herself. The two young people drive Bigger around, trying to befriend him, but ultimately making him feel ashamed and angry to be black. Instead, she directs him to a building where she meets her boyfriend, a Communist named Jan Erlone. His initial encounter with Mary Dalton, the rebellious daughter, makes him uncomfortable and worried that he’ll lose his job because she keeps talking to him about ' unions.' His first task is to drive her to the university that night. That afternoon, he goes to the Daltons’ house and gets the chauffeuring job.

Finally, Bigger threatens one of his friends in order to get out of the robbery. All of them are afraid to rob a white man, though nobody says so. During the day, as Bigger waits to see a wealthy white man for a job as chauffeur, he considers robbing a white-owned business with his buddies. We are instantly assailed with the family’s poverty and lack of options. The novel opens as Bigger Thomas, the protagonist, faces down and fights a huge rat that has invaded the Thomas’ one-room apartment.

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