fate.  Like the rat, Bigger's life is one in which the "narrow circle," closes in, and makes the experiences of fear and flight almost futile necessities, where fate is the only possible conclusion.

The rat that scurries across the floor in the opening of the novel is scared. Wright constructs Bigger's world in "Fear" in a similar manner. Bigger is afraid of a world that will not validate his voice or give opportunity.  This fear manifests itself in anger about the lack of power that envelops Bigger:  "We live here and they live there. We black and they white. They got things and we ain't. They do things and we can't. It's just like livin' in jail.”  In how he carries himself with his friends and internally, Bigger is like the rat in living a life constructed out of fear of "the other."  The fear that lies at the heart of Bigger's being in the first section of the novel illuminates the theme of hopelessness that exists, a condition that makes Bigger very similar to the rat in how both have limited options and are terrified by it.

When Bigger has to engage in "flight," it is similar to the rat running scared across the floor.  Wright constructs the "Flight" section as one where Bigger must flee from the reality created for him and one that he created.  This simultaneous experience is one that causes agony within Bigger, helping to enhance the idea that he can never really flee from that which plagues him.  Wright's description of Bigger as hiding behind a wall and having to scurry into the open, like the rat, resonates in this section:

 "There was something he knew and something he felt; something the world gave him and something he himself had. . . . [N]ever in all his life, with this black skin of his, had the two worlds, thought and feeling, will and mind, aspiration and satisfaction, been together; never had he felt a sense of wholeness."  The lack of wholeness is what motivates his "flight."  

Bigger thinks that he can escape a condition that is both external and internal.  The "flight" for Bigger is one where he becomes the rat who runs across the floor, hoping to escape the skillet of a society that wishes to do nothing more than brandish the carcass of what it has killed.  The second section communicates the mental state of Bigger, one where "flight" in many ways is evident.

The condition of "fate" is where Bigger exists at the end.  Bigger has been caught and, like the rat, is going to be executed for all to see.  Bigger understands that the one advantage he has in his condition is that his struggle is over: "What I killed for must’ve been good!…I feel all right when I look at it that way." This revelation that the system which constructed someone like Bigger is what change.  A condition of being where Bigger, like the rat, must struggle so much for so very little is where "fate" becomes the final understanding.  It is a form of release as the skillet comes crashing down on him.  All three sections communicate the condition in which Bigger lives, one that parallels the opening scene of the rat's death.

Book 1 of Native Son is entitled "Fear".  The main character of the story told here is Bigger Thomas, who is twenty years old and lives in a tenement in the South Side of Chicago.  Bigger's mother wants him to accept a job being offered by Henry Dalton, "a wealthy white man who owns much of the property in the ghetto".  Bigger really has no choice in the matter, because if he does not take the job, his family will be denied welfare, on which they depend for their survival. 

On his way to see Mr. Dalton, Bigger stops by a poolroom to visit with his friends.  Bigger comes up with a plan to rob a white-owned deli with them, but when the time comes to execute the plan he ruins things because he is afraid.  Bigger goes to see Mr. Dalton, and accepts the job being offered.  He will receive $25 a week to be a chauffeur, and is also given a room in which to live.  Bigger is extremely nervous, because he will now have to live among white people, whom he believes are all racist.

Bigger's first job as chauffeur is to take Mr. Dalton's beautiful daughter Mary to see Jan, her boyfriend.  Mary is a communist and tries to treat Bigger as an equal, but Bigger, having never had the experience before, does not know how to react, and fears that such familiarity will lead to trouble for him.  At Mary's direction, Bigger drives her and Jan to a restaurant on the South Side.  Jan buys some rum, and by the time Bigger drops Jan off and brings Mary home, she is quite drunk.  Bigger must help Mary to her room, carrying her in his arms because she is so intoxicated.  As he is getting her into bed, Mary's blind mother appears at the door.  Bigger covers Mary's head with a pillow so that her mother will not hear her incoherent moans.  He is terrified of the consequences if he should be caught as a black man with a white girl in her room, even though the situation is entirely innocent on his part.

When Bigger removes the pillow, he discovers to his horror that Mary is dead.  In a state of panic, he takes her body to the basement and stuffs it in the furnace (Book 1).