ance to live. Book Three is called "Fate", and indeed Bigger seems to be controlled his entire life by ambivalent outside forces who could care less about him. Considering the nature of a soul to be the essence of self and truth in each individual, Bigger has not been allowed to develop either truth or self. He has been lied to until he believes the lies he tells himself. He has no place in society. His own mother believes in him no more than the billboard reading "you can't win" that he sees each day outside his apartment. He has grown up in an environment where enormous rats fester in holes and water is a maybe situation, where meals are precarious and money is almost nonexistent, and where he is told time and time again that he has no worth, no dignity, no intelligence or creativity. Is it any wonder that Bigger is violent? It seems more fantastic that all of the people around him are not. The title of the novel begins to explain Bigger's situation; he is more a child of the city itself than of human parentage. His soul is as stunted as an undernourished plant whose blooms are destroyed before they can come to fruition. When he says, upon reading the paper "No! Jan didn't help me! He didn't have a damned thing to do with it! I -- I did it!" (p.283) he is clinging to the act of violence he performed as an affirmation of self. He is isolated by a blind society, he is loved by no one, he has never been given a chance to explore who and what he is. His attitude of "why care?" is rather to be expected, predicted, than wondered over. At the close of the novel, Bigger struggles to explain to Max the turmoil of emotions he feels, to assert for once and always his individuality by telling someone who will remember. His thought "Max did not even know!" (p.494) shows some of the passion behind his quest for self. If extreme emotions are polar opposites of each other, and one is born simply with the capacity for emotion itself, then Bigger could...
