"Hate and shame boiled in him against the people behind his back; he tried to think of words that would defy him...And at the same time he wanted those words to stop the tears of his mother and sister, to quiet and sooth the anger of his brother..." With all that has happened and with his being incarcerated with little hope of surviving, he is able to think about the pain he has caused his mother and sister and brother, and this gives Bigger some depth in the mind of the reader.

The character Buckley, acting as state's attorney (prosecutor) in the courtroom, helps convey an impression for the reader of what life was like for an accused black man in the 1940s. Of course the evidence seems overwhelming against Bigger; and the lurid idea of a black man burning one woman, severing the head of another white woman is...
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