Bigger Thomas The Black Belt kitchenette
Book 1
Bigger wakes here, kills a rat, and quarrels with his mother in a single crowded room that stands for the whole hemmed-in life of the Black Belt. The novel opens by making that confinement physical. It is the pressure he carries north across the color line.
Book 1 (Fear)
inferred The Thomas family's one-room kitchenette is fictional but set squarely in the South Side Black Belt, the strip of Bronzeville where Chicago's Black population was confined by restrictive covenants. Sited in Bronzeville, the district the novel describes; the exact building is invented.
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Mary Dalton The Dalton mansion, Kenwood
Book 1
Bigger is hired as chauffeur to the rich, blind Mrs. Dalton and drives their daughter Mary out for the night. Back in her bedroom, terrified of being found by her mother, he smothers Mary and burns her body in the furnace. A few blocks from the kitchenette, a whole different world becomes a death trap.
Book 1 (Fear)
inferred The Daltons' house is placed by the text in the wealthy white district just east of the Black Belt, in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area along a boulevard of mansions. Sited on Drexel Boulevard in Kenwood as the kind of address the novel describes; the specific house is fictional.
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