In the novel, Richard Wright uses fire and smoke, specifically from the furnace, to represent fear. When a group of reporters and Britten were conversing in the furnace room, Bigger was ordered to clean the ashes. As he opened the furnace, “there were faint wisps of white smoke at first, then the smoke drew dark, bulging out. Bigger’s eyes smarted, watered; he coughed. The smoke was rolling from the furnace now in heavy billowing grey clouds, filling the basement. Bigger backed away, catching a lungful of smoke. He bent over, coughing” (271). Fearing that Mary’s body had not completely burned, Bigger was reluctant to touch the furnace. However, upon opening the furnace door, Bigger’s fear, like the smoke, enveloped his whole body and his mind was filled with dread, only having a faint hope that Mary had actually burned. After the men helped him clean the furnace, Bigger’s feeling of suffocation returned, but now he was
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This instance represents the oppression of the dominant white society imposed onto the black people. “His arms and legs were aching from being cramped into so small a space, but he dared not move. He knew that they would not have cared if he had made himself more comfortable, but his moving would have called attention to himself and his black body” (86). In this situation, Bigger’s cramped feeling resembles the limits that are imposed onto the lives of the black people. Just as he was afraid to move and adjust his uncomfortable position in the car, so too, he was afraid to live his life in the white society for fear of further limitations to his choices and actions. He felt both the physical and mental boundaries which that restricted his actions and enabled the white people to rule the society of both races, much like how Jan had control of the steering wheel while Bigger was cramped in the
This instance represents the oppression of the dominant white society imposed onto the black people. “His arms and legs were aching from being cramped into so small a space, but he dared not move. He knew that they would not have cared if he had made himself more comfortable, but his moving would have called attention to himself and his black body” (86). In this situation, Bigger’s cramped feeling resembles the limits that are imposed onto the lives of the black people. Just as he was afraid to move and adjust his uncomfortable position in the car, so too, he was afraid to live his life in the white society for fear of further limitations to his choices and actions. He felt both the physical and mental boundaries which that restricted his actions and enabled the white people to rule the society of both races, much like how Jan had control of the steering wheel while Bigger was cramped in the