Debatable as the final scene is, in which for the first time Bigger calls a white man by his first name, Bigger is never anything but a failed human. He represents a black man conscious of a system of racial oppression that leaves him no opportunity to exist but through crime. As he says to Gus, "They don't let us do nothing... I can't get used to it." A line goes, one cannot exist by simply reacting: a man must be more than the sum total of his brutalizations. Bigger admits to wanting to be an aviator and later, to Max, aspire to other positions esteemed in the American Dream. But here he can do nothing . . . just be one of many blacks in what was called the "ghetto" and maybe get a job serving whites; crime seems preferable, rather than accidental or inevitable. Not surprisingly, then, he already has a criminal history, and he has even been to reform school. Ultimately, the snap decisions which law calls "crimes" arose from assaults to his dignity, and being trapped like the rat he killed with a pan living a life where others held the skillet.