Parmi les blocs composés par la narration - narration très composée, 400p, malgré une poétique de la longueur, exploratoire -:
- Bigger Thomas, onomastique chargée.
- croix du preacher chrétien // croix de feu du Ku Klux Klan (à Chicago : affaire rendue nationale). Bigger : "I can die without a cross!" (313, Harper & Row, NY, 1940)
- l'étudiant, contre le Bigger-type - différencié aussi du "leader of your race", par marques de distinction sociale : "He went off his nut from studying too much at the university. He was writing a book on how colored people live and he says somebody stole all the facts he'd found. He says he's got to the bottom of why colored folks are treated bad and he's going to tell the President and have things changed, see? He's nuts! He swears that his university professor had him locked up." (318). [...] " 'I'll tell the President and the League of Nations...' " (319). Leaders : "They won't listen to me. They rich, even though the white folks treat them almost like they do me. They almost like white people, when it comes to guys like me. They say guys like me make it hard for them to get along with white folks." (330)
- Black / Jew : Max, "They hate me because I'm trying to help you. They're writing me letters, calling me a 'dirty Jew' " (322).
- discursivités, formes sociales/culturelles du discours : trial scene. Les discours, pitched, Buckley/Max. Scènes de performativité, assez lisses. Drôle de forme pour la conclusion d'un roman, de ses noeuds singuliers.
- Complexité : reste que l'après-procès pose une scène qui décomplète, avec la position de Max qui vacille, résistance à l'écoute et à la performance, l'événement narratif de ces dernières pages : nouvelle positivation du crime comme liberté, comme acte. Ambiguïté juste sauvée.
- Mr Dalton (+ blindness, Mrs Dalton's, + sight and visibility and invisibilising), 362, par Max : "Say to yourself, Mr. Dalton, 'I offered my daughter as a burnt sacrifice and it was not enough to push back into its grave this thing that haunts me." Motif noir, américain.