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Chapter 15
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear Martin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Entitlement, and Implicit Bias
Appearances and Assumptions
Support, Acceptance, and Belonging
Opportunity and Upward Mobility
The Media and Public Discourse
Summary
Analysis
In an article printed by a local paper, a staff writer announces that a grand jury “returned a multiple-count indictment against former Atlanta police officer Garrett Tison in connection with a January shooting involving two teenaged boys.” The writer notes that this indictment serves as a “glaring contrast” to Shemar Carson’s and Tavarrius Jenkins’s cases. “Two of the charges—aggravated assault and felony murder—have many members of the community in an uproar,” the journalist writes. The writer then prints a quote by Tison’s neighbor. “The man was defending himself from thugs,” says the neighbor. “I’ve known Garrett for twenty-five years. If he says those boys had a gun, they had a gun.” Furthermore, another police officer suggests that the courts are “out to make an example” of Tison. “Prosecutor pulled the race card, and the grand jury bought it hook, line, and sinker,” the officer says.
Even the title of this article indicates that the media is already starting to inundate the public with unfounded speculations that will possibly sway mass opinion and obfuscate what really happened when Tison murdered Manny. Readers know that Tison deserves to be indicted, but an indictment is not a sentence, and if this article is any indication of how people will react to the story, it seems all too likely that the jury might assume the worst about Manny and Justyce in order to create a sympathetic view of Officer Tison.
Themes
