d to seize some heavy object in his hand and grip it with all the strength of his body and in some strange way rise up and stand in naked space above the speeding car and with one final blow blot it out" (p. 70). Bigger is placed in the seat between Mary and Jan. He is positioned there by these representatives of the white world who have no idea of the apprehension and paralyzing anxiety their behavior instills in the man.
Far worse than any patronizing attitude adopted by Mr. Dalton or the general neglect the rest of the world imposes on him, Mary's and Jan's behavior puts Bigger in the position where he is forced to make choices in regard to individual white people. In existential terms, Bigger is being forced to abandon his inaction and has come to the point he feared--the point where he will have to make choices. So long as the suffocating walls of whiteness remained far enough apart from him, Bigger could continue to exist without taking any action that might require him to take responsibility. The walls close in as Mary and Jan, entirely unintentionally, press Bigger to make choices. But, as Sartre held, the freedom to make these choices entails assuming responsibility for them.
In his explanation of the dilemma of personal existence, Jean Paul Sartre takes the soldier at war as his example. The soldier might claim that he has no responsibility for the war. He did not declare the war and does not even desire it. Yet, Sartre believes, he has responsibility for it. By his decision not to kill himself or to desert, the soldier chooses the war. In the same manner, the citizens choose the war because it evolves out of the situation of which they are a part. To exist means to choose to exist. People are free to choose and by choosing, they acquire responsibility and, thereby, deserve the war or whatever it is they have chosen--even life itself. As Sartre, assuming the role of the soldier, says of war, "I deserve it...