Quotes

Question 1

‘Was what he had heard about white people really true?’

Answer 1

Evident how little contact Bigger has aid with white people

Question 2

‘He was going amongst white people so he would take his knife and his gun; it would make him feel the equal of them’

Answer 2

Bigger protection

Question 3

‘He could not. He must not. He had to burn this girl’

Answer 3

Bigger - no choice but to burn Mary

Question 4

‘The head hungry limply on the newspaper, the curly black hair dragging about in the blood’

Answer 4

Disposal of Mary’s body

Question 5

‘She was white and he hated her’

Answer 5

Why Bigger hates Mary

Question 6

‘He held the pillow down in a grip that took all of his strength’

Answer 6

Bigger kills Mary

Question 7

‘In five minutes he was sound asleep’

Answer 7

Bigger untroubled by murdering Mary

Question 8

‘You’re a communist you black son of a bitch’

Answer 8

Britten

Question 9

‘I got no happiness. I ain’t never had none and you do this to me’

Answer 9

Bessie’s happiness

Question 10

‘Urgent whisper of pleading’

Answer 10

Bessie before rape

Question 11

‘He lifted the brick again and again’

Answer 11

Bigger kills Bessie

Question 12

‘In all of his life these two murders were the most meaningful thing that had happened to him’

Answer 12

Bigger’s life

Question 13

‘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’

Answer 13

Bessie/Mary race

Question 14

‘The black girl was merely evidence’

Answer 14

Degrading Bessie’s life

Question 15

‘He has lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been’

Answer 15

Bigger’s selfish actions - isolated by construct of race

Question 16

‘This vicious game will roll on like a bloody river to an even bloodier sea’

Answer 16

Max’s defence - weight of racism

Question 17

‘The hate and fear which we have inspired in him, woven by our civilisation into the very structure of his consciousness’

Answer 17

Max - white responsible for blacks hate - we verses him

Question 18

‘How that poor child must have struggled to escape that maddened ape’

Answer 18

Britten - Mary’s struggle - significance of adjective

Question 19

‘He comes under this court under a handicap’

Answer 19

Max - plea of innocence

Question 20

‘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’

Answer 20

Bigger - extreme inequality - symbolism

Question 21

‘He was enjoying her agony, seeing and feeling the worth of himself in her bewildered desperation’

Answer 21

Bigger - Bessie’s pain

Question 22

‘The loud demand of the tensity of his own body was a voice that drowned out hers’

Answer 22

Bigger rapes Bessie

Question 23

‘That was a dumb thing to do - throwing her away with all that money’

Answer 23

Why bigger regrets killing Bessie

Question 24

‘Why shouldn’t the cold white world rise up as a beautiful dream in which he could walk’

Answer 24

American dream - white supremacy

Question 25

‘Several hundred negroes resembling Bigger Thomas’

Answer 25

Dehumanisation - identity