other's philosophy of suffering to wait for a later reward is equally stagnating -- to Bigger it appears that she is weak and will not fight to live. Her religion is a blindness; but she needs to be blind in order to survive, to fit into a society that would drive a "seeing" person mad. All of the characters that Bigger says are blind are living in darkness because the light is too painful. Bigger wants to break through that blindness, to discover something of worth in himself, thinking that "all one had to do was be bold, do something nobody ever thought of. The whole things came to him in the form of a powerful and simple feeling; there was in everyone a great hunger to believe that made them blind, and if he could see while others were blind, then he could get what he wanted and never be caught at it" (p.120). Just as Bigger later hides himself amidst the catacombs of the old buildings, many people hide themselves deep within their minds in order to bear the ordeal of life and the oppression of an uncaring society. But their blindness allows them something that Bigger cannot achieve: it allows these people to meld into the society that is the city, while Bigger must stand at the outside of that community alternately marvelling and hating the compromises of those within. Bigger is alone; he is isolated from every facet of human affection. Max tells the court that Bigger cannot kill because he himself is dead, and a person without empathy or sympathy, without the deep, steadying love of family or faith in anything. When he lashes out in violence it is in a way a search for what hurt him; he hurts others because it is a way of hiding that he is hurt a afraid. At one point in the novel he cries because "once again he had trusted his feelings and once again they had betrayed him" (p.359). If one considers life to be a period of growth and learning, recognition of self-worth and of the worth of others, then Bigger has not been given the ch...
