Bigger often finds himself lashing out as a way of managing his fear. He is afraid of not being able to help his family enough and for this reason he treats them harshly, maintaining "an attitude of strict confidentiality towards them" (10). He is afraid of holding Blum, a white man, and therefore projects his own fear onto Gus. She scolds him for this, calling him “'yellow'” when he hesitates to take the job (26). Bigger has been so psychologically beaten down in his own community and trained to believe that he is an inferior person that he even feels the need to push his way through his own friends, fighting Gus to "feel equal" to him (41). Yet his anger translates even more directly to the white people he blames for it. He describes the deep and "inarticulate" hatred he feels towards Jan and Mary, but cannot pinpoint its immediate cause. This is the partial and unconscious reason why Bigger kills Mary (67). For the first time, Bigger feels some semblance of control over his situation and the white world that Mary represents at the time. However, Bigger also consciously knows that if he is discovered in his room he will be accused of rape just because he is black, and therefore knows that his only option is to ensure that he does not get discovered. In this way, although not entirely intentional, the violent act of suffocating Mary occurs as a consequence of Bigger's action