How we cite our quotes:
Quote #4
"How you l-l-like them sewing classes at the Y, Vera?" he asked.
"Bigger," his mother sobbed, trying to talk through her tears. "Bigger, honey, she won’t go to school no more. She says the other girls look at her and make her ‘shamed…."
He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit. He sat on the cot and his mother knelt at his feet. Her face was lifted to his; her eyes were empty, eyes that looked upward when the last hope of earth had failed. (3.223-226)
Bigger realizes that his actions are not his alone—he was never actually separate from his family. What he has done affects them more than he had realized.