Native Son

Two of the most significant images in the novel are the furnace in the Daltons’ basement and the snowstorm that begins right after Mary’s death, picking up speed to become a blizzard. The novel opens on a clear day amid the frigid Chicago winter. At the Daltons’ Peggy shows Bigger the coal-burning furnace, which will become Bigger’s responsibility to maintain. The warmth of the furnace, powerful enough to heat the entirety of the large house, is a luxury. Fire is necessary in the freezing weather, but it is also dangerous. The furnace is like Bigger, full of fire that must be kept under control just as Bigger’s hate and fear burn hot inside him. The house is heated by the labor of those who are burning with fury from racial oppression, both literally by Bigger and figuratively by the exorbitant rent money collected from poor Black tenants. When Bigger’s fiery anger and fear erupt, he lashes out and kills Mary.

Bigger shoves Mary’s body into the belly of the stove, hoping the fire will consume her completely. But, as Bigger says earlier, white people are constantly inside him, living in his stomach and chest. He’s haunted and constantly revisited by the image of Mary’s severed head. Bigger piles more and more coal into the furnace, hoping that the fire will continue to heat up and burn everything, just as he buries and mutes his own non-violent emotions under increasing piles of hatred and anger. But some things can’t be burned away and erased. Clogged with ashes, the furnace stops functioning until its grisly contents are cleaned out. Meanwhile, it starts to snow, beginning with a soft blanket and escalating into a blizzard as Bigger attempts to run. The snow mirrors the white people who start hunting Bigger, who Bigger sees as a massive accumulation of cold, icy whiteness rather than individuals.

As Bigger evades police and their vigilante volunteers, he constantly fights the cold and seeks ways to ignite the fire within himself and stay warm. When he kills Bessie in the frozen empty building, there is no anger or fury. It’s a cold, calculated choice, and Bessie ultimately dies alone of neglect, freezing rather than burning. When the manhunt finally catches up with him, he evades them by running across snowy rooves, the snow making his body numb until they blast him with the hose and freeze him. Bigger is overwhelmed by both the cold and the white mob. In jail, when Max asks him questions about his life and his motives, Bigger thinks hard and finally manages to clear out some of the ashes that were clogging his own furnace and obscuring his thoughts.