On page 59 of Native Son, Bigger finally shows how happy and relieved he is about his job as a chauffeur for the Dalton family. Earlier in the book, it was clear that he resented, hated, and feared the whites through his interactions with his group of friends and his family. When Bigger is alone in his new room at the Dalton’s, he is pleased with what will become of his new life. He finally has “a room all to himself!” and no longer has to sleep next to his kicking brother. “And he would buy himself another watch, too. A dollar watch was not good enough for a job like this; he would buy a gold one. There were a lot of new things he would get. Oh, boy! This would be an easy life.”
Bigger is not “selling out” by taking advantage of the opportunity presented to him. He understands that it is a good way to make money and to be at peace with the white people, the people who limit what his people can do, in order to create a better life for himself and his family. He is given great working hours, a beautiful place to stay, and the people he works for, although white, are wonderful people that contribute to the closing of the gap between the colored and the whites in society. Although he feels as though he can’t completely be himself around the Daltons, we can already see a difference in his interactions with Mary than with the whites he criticized with his friends.
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