The Nickel Boys

English

The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead - focuses on two boy named Elwood and Turner who were sent to an all-boy reform school in Florida during the era of Jim Crow laws, includes themes of injustice, racism, and abuse

“You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other.”

Conversation between Turner and Elwood, Nickel will take black kids “out back” and the kids will disappear - prior views and laws on this group of people will affect how they are treated by others; systematic racism

“If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.”

During the prologue, when the narrator is speaking about how former Nickel Boys would meet and talk to each other about their experiences at Nickel - use of syntax shows how trauma creates memory fragmentation, Suffering unites the boys at Nickel, a sense of belonging

“Like justice, it existed in theory.”

Narrator explaining how Jaimie is constantly switched dorm assignments and follows the Nickel rules and “handbook” - (Simile) criticizes the justice system, especially for black people, Gap between what is supposed to happen and the reality

“because for him to do nothing was to undermine his own dignity.”

After Elwood got beat up by the two kids who were trying to steal candy at the tobacco shop where he worked because he told them to stop, even though the owner, Mr. Marconi told him not to do anything - Moral compass, morally incapable of being a bystander, maintaining his values

“The white boys bruised differently than the black boys and called it the Ice Cream Factory because you came out with bruises of every color. The black boys called it the White House because that was its official name and it fit and didn’t need to be embellished. The White House delivered the law and everybody obeyed.”

Color symbolism - dark humor (portrays their bruises in a colorful way contrasted with harsh reality of punishments in the White House)

Euphemism - “Ice Cream Factory” and “White House” brutal punishments at Nickel; keep the boys inside Nickel and behaved

Allusion to American justice system

“Even in death the boys were trouble.”

Opening line - creates tone of injustice and suggests that boys’ suffering and crimes of the institution persists beyond their lives

“There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you down, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are.”

Elwood listens to Dr. Martin Luther King’s words from At Zion Hill

Colloquial language – you as a direct address to the reader. Elwood’s language of identity.

“They buried the boys in the field, and the world kept silent.”

“You could talk about what they did to you, but it didn’t matter. No one would listen.”