Bigger’s thoughts at this point are a kind of transformation of what he has been thinking all along, but perhaps has not been as objectively aware of. From the beginning of the story Bigger has had a sense of alienation. The attempt by his mother to make him fulfill expectations, to be a conformist, is one of the things Bigger resents. He senses the unfairness of the system, the fact that the deck is stacked against him, but he nevertheless goes to the Dalton house to apply for the job recommended for him. The evening with Mary and Jan merely increases his resentment and his feelings of being an outsider. Though the killing of Mary is an accident, it gives Bigger a sense of liberation. He now sees more clearly and objectively his status as a transgressor which has been forced upon him, and it makes him see what he regards as the illusion by which his family lives as a tangible thing. His mother, brother and sister seem “blind,” trapped in a cocoon of non-recognition of the reality Bigger is aware of. He stares at his brother Buddy in an obvious way that even prompts Buddy to ask why he’s looking at him. Bigger can only reply that it’s nothing. He would not be able to explain to his family why he now views them as outsiders with whom he cannot commune on a normal, conformist level. In his status as a fugitive he realizes his family is now beyond his reach.
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