Editing Native Son (section)

== Plot summary ==

=== Book One: Fear ===
Twenty-year-old Bigger Thomas lives in one room with his brother Buddy, his sister Vera, and their mother. Suddenly, a rat appears. The room turns into a maelstrom, and after a violent chase, Bigger kills the animal with an iron skillet and terrorizes his sister Vera with the dead rat. She faints, and Mrs. Thomas scolds Bigger, who hates his family because they suffer and he cannot do anything about it.

That evening, Bigger has to see Mr. Dalton, a white man, for a new job. Bigger's family depends on him. He would like to leave his responsibilities forever, but when he thinks of what to do, he only sees a blank wall.

Bigger walks to a poolroom and meets his friend, Gus. Bigger tells him that every time he thinks about whites, he feels something terrible will happen to him. They meet other friends, G.H. and Jack, and plan a robbery. They are all afraid of attacking and stealing from a white man, but none of them wants to admit their concerns. Before the robbery, Bigger and Jack go to the movies. They are attracted to the world of wealthy whites in the newsreel and feel strangely moved by the tom-toms and the primitive black people in the film, yet also feel they are equal to those worlds. After the film, Bigger returns to the poolroom and attacks Gus violently, forcing him to lick his blade in a demeaning way to hide Bigger's own cowardice. The fight ends any chance of the robbery occurring, and Bigger is vaguely aware that his actions were intentional.

When he finally gets the job, Bigger does not know how to behave in Dalton's large, luxurious house. Mr. Dalton and his blind wife use strange words. They try to be kind to the young man, but actually make him uncomfortable; Bigger does not know what they expect of him.

Then their daughter, Mary, enters the room, asks Bigger why he is not in a union, and calls her father a "capitalist". Bigger does not know the word and becomes even more confused and fearful that he may lose the job. After the conversation, Peggy, an Irish cook, takes Bigger to his room and tells him the Daltons are a nice family, but he must avoid Mary's [[Communism|Communist]] friends. After she leaves, Bigger marvels that he has never had a room of his own before.

That night, he drives Mary around and meets her Communist boyfriend Jan. Throughout the evening, Jan and Mary talk to Bigger, oblige him to take them to a diner where their friends are eating, invite him to sit at their table, and tell him to call them by their first names. Bigger does not know how to respond to their requests and becomes frustrated, as he is simply their [[chauffeur]] for the night. At the diner, they buy a bottle of rum, then Bigger drives throughout [[Washington Park (Chicago park)|Washington Park]] while Jan and Mary drink and make out in the back seat. Jan departs, but Mary is so drunk that Bigger has to carry her to her bedroom when they return home. He is terrified someone will see him with her in his arms; however, he still cannot resist the forbidden temptation and kisses her.

Just then, the bedroom door opens, and Mrs. Dalton enters. Bigger knows she is blind but is terrified she will sense him there. Frightened of the consequences if he, a black man, were to be found in Mary's bedroom, he silences Mary by pressing a pillow into her face. Mary claws at Bigger's hands while Mrs. Dalton is in the room, trying to alert Bigger that she cannot breathe. Mrs. Dalton approaches the bed, smells alcohol in the air, scolds her daughter, and leaves. As Bigger removes the pillow, he realizes that Mary has suffocated to death. Bigger starts thinking frantically, and decides he will tell everyone that her boyfriend Jan took Mary into the house that night.

Thinking it will be better if Mary disappears as she was supposed to leave for Detroit in the morning, Bigger decides in desperation to burn her body in the house furnace. Her body initially will not fit through the furnace opening, but after decapitating it, Bigger finally manages to put the corpse inside. He adds extra coal to the furnace, leaves the corpse to burn, and goes home.

=== Book Two: Flight ===
Bigger's current girlfriend Bessie Mears suspects him of having done something to Mary. Bigger goes back to work.

Mr. Dalton has hired a private detective, Mr. Britten, who interrogates Bigger accusingly, but Dalton vouches for Bigger. Bigger relates the events of the previous evening in a way calculated to throw suspicion on Jan, knowing Mr. Dalton dislikes Jan because he is a Communist. When Britten finds Jan, he puts the boy and Bigger in the same room and confronts them with their conflicting stories. Jan is surprised by Bigger's story, but offers him help.

Bigger storms away from the Daltons'. He decides to write a false kidnapping note when he discovers that Mr. Dalton owns the rat-infested flat that Bigger's family rents. Bigger slips the note under the Daltons' front door and then returns to his room.

When the Daltons receive the note, they contact the police, who take over the investigation from Britten, and journalists soon arrive at the house. Bigger is afraid, but does not want to leave. In the afternoon, he is ordered to remove the ashes from the furnace and make a new fire. He is terrified and starts poking the ashes with the shovel until the whole room is full of smoke. Furious, one of the journalists takes the shovel and pushes Bigger aside. He immediately finds the remains of Mary's bones and an earring in the furnace, and Bigger flees.

Bigger goes directly to Bessie and tells her the whole story. Bessie realizes that white people will think he raped the girl before killing her. They leave together, but Bigger has to drag Bessie around because she is paralyzed by fear. When they lie down together in an abandoned building, Bigger rapes Bessie and falls asleep. In the morning, he decides he has to kill her in her sleep. He hits Bessie on the head with a brick before throwing her through a window and into an air shaft, then realizes that the money he had taken from Mary's purse was in Bessie's pocket.

Bigger flees through the city, during which he sees newspaper headlines and overhears various conversations about the crime. Whites hate him for the murder and blacks hate him even more for the shame he brought to the black community. After a frantic chase over the city rooftops, the police finally catch him.

=== Book Three: Fate ===
During his first few days in prison, Bigger does not eat, drink, or talk to anyone. Then Jan comes to visit him. He says Bigger has taught him a lot about black and white relationships, and offers him the help of a Communist lawyer named Boris Max. In the long hours that Max and Bigger spend talking, Bigger starts understanding his relationships with his family and with the world. He acknowledges his fury, his need for a future, and his wish for a meaningful life. He reconsiders his attitudes about white people, whether they are aggressive like Britten or accepting like Jan.

Throughout the trial, the prosecuting team focus primarily on Mary's murder and pay significantly less attention to Bessie's murder. It is also falsely argued that Bigger raped Mary before killing her. The novel finishes with Max's lengthy [[closing argument]]. In it, he does not argue that Bigger is innocent. Rather he talks about how whites have intentionally blinded themselves to [[racism|racial oppression]], and that the [[ghetto]]s, in turn, have fueled oppression and crime. He concludes with the statement that the court cannot sentence Bigger to death when they have not even acknowledged that as a human being he has [[Natural rights and legal rights|the right to exist]]. Max urges for them to give him [[life imprisonment|life in prison]] instead.

Bigger is found guilty and sentenced to death for murder. As his execution draws near, he appears to have come to terms with his fate.