Quotes Flashcards
‘Was what he had heard about white people really true?’
Evident how little contact Bigger has aid with white people
‘He was going amongst white people so he would take his knife and his gun; it would make him feel the equal of them’
Bigger protection
‘He could not. He must not. He had to burn this girl’
Bigger - no choice but to burn Mary
‘The head hungry limply on the newspaper, the curly black hair dragging about in the blood’
Disposal of Mary’s body
‘She was white and he hated her’
Why Bigger hates Mary
‘He held the pillow down in a grip that took all of his strength’
Bigger kills Mary
‘In five minutes he was sound asleep’
Bigger untroubled by murdering Mary
‘You’re a communist you black son of a bitch’
Britten
‘I got no happiness. I ain’t never had none and you do this to me’
Bessie’s happiness
‘Urgent whisper of pleading’
Bessie before rape
‘He lifted the brick again and again’
Bigger kills Bessie
‘In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful thing that had happened to him’
Bigger’s life
‘Though he had killed a black girl and a white girl, he knew that it would be for the death of the white girl that he was punished’
Bessie/Mary race
‘The black girl was merely evidence’
Degrading Bessie’s life
‘He has lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been’
Bigger’s selfish actions - isolated by construct of race
‘This vicious game will roll on like a bloody river to an even bloodier sea’
Max’s defence - weight of racism
‘The hate and fear which we have inspired in him, woven by our civilisation into the very structure of his consciousness’
Max - white responsible for blacks hate - we verses him
‘How that poor child must have struggled to escape that maddened ape’
Britten - Mary’s struggle - significance of adjective
‘He comes under this court under a handicap’
Max - plea of innocence
‘The knowledge that he had killed a white girl they loved and regarded as a symbol of beauty made him feel the equal of them’
Bigger - extreme inequality - symbolism
‘He was enjoying her agony, seeing and feeling the worth of himself in her bewildered desperation’
Bigger - Bessie’s pain
‘The loud demand of the tensity of his own body was a voice that drowned out hers’
Bigger rapes Bessie
‘That was a dumb thing to do - throwing her away with all that money’
Why bigger regrets killing Bessie
‘Why shouldn’t the cold white world rise up as a beautiful dream in which he could walk’
American dream - white supremacy
‘Several hundred negroes resembling Bigger Thomas’
Dehumanisation - identity
