Bigger kills a large rat in the family's cramped one-room apartment while his mother and sister scream in terror.

Mrs. Thomas insists Bigger keep his job interview with wealthy Mr. Dalton or the family will lose their relief money.

Mr. Dalton hires Bigger as the family's chauffeur for twenty-five dollars a week plus room and board.

Mary Dalton redirects Bigger away from her university campus to pick up her communist boyfriend Jan Erlone.

Jan and Mary force Bigger to join them at a South Side restaurant, insisting he eat at their table.

Bigger silences drunk Mary by pressing a pillow over her face when blind Mrs. Dalton enters the bedroom.

Bigger burns Mary's body in the Daltons' furnace, decapitating her so she fits inside.

Inspired by the Leopold and Loeb case, Bigger hatches a plan to send the Daltons a kidnapping ransom note.

Bigger writes a ransom note signed 'Red' with a hammer and sickle and slips it under the Dalton front door.

A reporter helping clear the furnace ashes discovers Mary's bones and an earring amid the coals.

Bigger escapes the Dalton house by jumping out a window into the snow below.

Bigger rapes and murders Bessie with a brick in a freezing abandoned building to stop her from exposing him.

Police blast Bigger off a rooftop water tower with a fire hose and capture him as the mob calls for lynching.

Boris Max delivers a courtroom speech arguing that racial oppression inevitably produced Bigger's crimes.

The judge sentences Bigger to death, and the governor refuses Max's plea for clemency.

Bigger Thomas, a young Black man in Chicago, kills a rat in his family's one-room apartment before reluctantly taking a job as chauffeur for the wealthy Dalton family. When a drunk Mary Dalton kisses him and her blind mother enters the room, Bigger smothers Mary in a panic and burns her body to hide the crime. He schemes to extract ransom money from the Daltons, enlisting his girlfriend Bessie before killing her to silence her, while the city launches a massive manhunt. Bigger is captured on a rooftop and jailed, where his communist attorney Boris Max mounts an impassioned defense arguing that racial oppression made Bigger's crimes inevitable. Despite Max's eloquent plea, the judge sentences Bigger to death and the governor refuses to intervene.

The headline events driving Bigger's crime, flight, and fate.

Bigger and Gus play a game called 'white,' imitating powerful men, until Bigger erupts in rage at their limited lives.

Bigger pressures his friends at Doc's pool hall to follow through on the planned robbery of Blum's Delicatessen.

Bigger attacks Gus with a knife and slices up the pool table, getting kicked out and sabotaging the robbery.

Housekeeper Peggy shows Bigger his private room and the coal furnace he will be responsible for maintaining.

Jan insists on driving the car himself and squeezes Bigger between himself and Mary in the front seat.

Bigger returns to the Dalton house the morning after the killing and stokes the furnace while Peggy watches.

Bigger tells Peggy that Mary left the night before with a man, deliberately casting suspicion on Jan.

Private investigator Britten interrogates Bigger, shoves him against a wall, and produces Communist pamphlets found in his dresser.

Britten confronts Jan at the Dalton house and damages his credibility when Jan initially lies about seeing Mary.

Bigger coerces a terrified Bessie into serving as the ransom pickup person by threatening to kill her.

Mr. Dalton tells assembled reporters that Mary has been kidnapped and a ten-thousand-dollar ransom has been demanded.

Bigger reads newspaper reports describing thousands of officers and volunteers hunting him across the Black Belt.

Buckley shows Bigger the lynch mob outside the jail and pressures him until Bigger signs a written confession.

Bessie's battered body is dramatically wheeled into the inquest on a gurney as evidence in the case against Bigger.

Max visits Bigger on his final day and Bigger asks him to pass along a greeting to Jan.

Before meeting the Daltons, Bigger spends his day in confrontations with friends and nearly goes through with a robbery he is too frightened to attempt. Once hired as chauffeur, Bigger is drawn into humiliating situations by Jan and Mary that leave him feeling exposed and furious. After Mary's death, Bigger carefully manages the cover-up, tending the furnace under watchful eyes and deflecting suspicion onto Jan before a private investigator closes in. Bigger pushes a reluctant Bessie into the ransom scheme and the Daltons announce the kidnapping to a crowd of reporters, but the truth surfaces before the money can be collected. As the trial unfolds, Buckley coerces a signed confession out of Bigger, Bessie's body is used as a courtroom prop, and Max's final prison visit closes the novel on a bittersweet farewell.

The encounters, schemes, and confessions that shaped Bigger's story.

Bigger and Jack watch a newsreel showing Mary Dalton with a radical and realize she is the daughter of his future employer.

Bigger meets the pale, blind Mrs. Dalton during his job interview and feels deeply unsettled by her presence.

Bigger carries drunk Mary to her bedroom, keenly aware that being discovered alone with a white woman could get him killed.

Bigger finds Mary's purse in the car after burning her body and pockets a large roll of cash.

Bigger wakes the morning after Mary's death feeling transformed, separate from his family, and strangely alive for the first time.

Bigger notices a nearby building managed by South Side Real Estate and realizes Mr. Dalton owns his family's dilapidated apartment.

Bigger draws his gun and threatens Jan outside the Dalton house to buy time before Jan can prove his innocence.

The Daltons' white cat leaps onto Bigger's shoulder in front of reporters, seeming to silently accuse him of the murder.

Bigger is brought to the Cook County Morgue and faints from pain and the crush of hostile white faces.

Jan visits Bigger's jail cell, forgives him for framing him, and introduces communist lawyer Boris Max.

Buckley brings the Dalton family and then the Thomas family into Bigger's jail cell at the same time.

After the inquest, Bigger rips off Reverend Hammond's cross and hurls it away, rejecting religious comfort entirely.

Max questions Bigger at length about his life and motivations, and Bigger begins to understand himself for the first time.

Bigger pleads guilty in open court, shocking the crowd, as Max argues his circumstances should affect his sentencing.

Buckley delivers his summation calling Bigger's crimes monstrous and demanding the court impose the death penalty.

From the moment Bigger sees a newsreel of his future employer's daughter with a radical, he senses danger ahead, and his unease deepens when he meets the watchful, blind Mrs. Dalton and is forced to carry a drunk Mary to her bedroom. Killing Mary transforms him: he pockets her money and wakes the next morning feeling, for the first time, alive and powerful rather than trapped. His growing confidence—threatening Jan at gunpoint, discovering that Mr. Dalton owns his family's squalid apartment building—unravels when the family's white cat singles him out in front of reporters, and he is forced to flee. In jail, Jan's unexpected forgiveness cracks open Bigger's blanket hatred of white people, and Max's probing questions drive Bigger to articulate the fear and fury that have ruled his whole life. Bigger goes to his execution having finally begun to see himself as a human being in relation to others, not merely an object of white hatred.