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Dead (p. 3–5)
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Ghost Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Progress, Storytelling, and Justice
Racism and the Law
Childhood
Fear
Education
Summary
Analysis
December 8. Morning. While Jerome eats pancakes, Ma makes him promise to come directly home, as she does every day. Meanwhile, Kim pokes her tongue out at him. Internally, Jerome laments that he’s “the good kid,” the chubby one whom other kids make fun of. He resolves that when he’s an adult, he’ll be friends with everyone and maybe become president like Obama. Even though Kim irritates him by asking tons of curious questions and insulting Minecraft, he tolerates her because she claims to believe that he’ll do it.
Ma always makes Jerome promise to come directly home from school, which implies that she fears for his safety—a fear that seems retrospectively justified, since a police officer will kill Jerome. Jerome’s resentment about being a “good kid” and his desire to become an adult are tragically ironic: because a police officer fails to recognize that Jerome is a good kid, he will never get to become an adult. Jerome’s aspiration to be like President Barack Obama, who served as the first Black president of the U.S. from 2009 to 2017, alludes to the cultural discourse around President Obama suggesting that his election was symptomatic of progress in U.S. racial equality. The police-involved killing of Jerome, a Black child, undermines this optimism.
Themes
Grandma tells Jerome and Kim to get moving and hands Ma her lunch bag. Jerome and Kim don’t get one because their school gives them free lunches. In Jerome’s family, “everybody works.” Ma starts work at 8 a.m. as a receptionist at a Holiday Inn. Jerome and Kim have their schoolwork, which Ma says is their “job.” Pop leaves at 4 a.m. for his sanitation officer route, during which he drives the garbage truck solo while listening to Motown. Grandma cleans the house, prepares the meals, babysits Jerome and Kim, and helps them with their homework.
Jerome and Kim qualify for free lunch at school, indicating that their family is low-income enough to qualify for assistance. Ma’s insistence that school is Jerome and Kim’s “job” implies that Ma believes that getting an education should be taken as seriously as working as a paid employee, perhaps because education will help the children improve their circumstances in the future.
Themes
Ma tells Jerome again to come directly home after school. Grandma hugs Jerome and tells him that she’s anxious about him due to some nightmares. Jerome often comforts Ma and Grandma. They’re anxious, especially Grandma, who has “premonitions” in her dreams. Pop’s also anxious, though he never says so. Before he leaves for work in the morning, he looks in on Jerome and Kim. Jerome always pretends to be asleep while Pop looks. Then Pop quietly closes the bedroom door and leaves.
Every adult in Jerome’s household—Ma, Grandma, and Pop—is fearful for his safety. Though they can’t yet know that a police officer will shoot Jerome, their fear implies a belief that this might happen someday, belying optimistic claims about racial progress in the U.S. Indeed, their fears suggest that it’s dangerous simply to be a Black child in a low-income household.
Themes
Grandma, distressed, asks Jerome to list “three good things”—three is her lucky number. Jerome lists enjoying school, liking snow, and having a cat when he grows up. (He also plans to have a dog but doesn’t mention that because it’s a fourth thing.) Grandma lets out a relieved breath at this sign that Jerome is okay. When Jerome waves goodbye to Grandma, Ma tells him to “study hard.” He knows Ma likes that he comforted Grandma, but she also dislikes “Grandma’s southern ways.” Grandma had to leave elementary school to babysit her younger siblings, while Ma and Pop graduated high school. Ma wants Jerome and Kim to get even more education by attending college.
The narrative Jerome tells about his family—his grandmother had to drop out of elementary school, his parents graduated high school, and now he is supposed to go to college—implies a story of family progress through education. Yet Ma’s dislike of Grandma’s “Southern ways,” which seems like a euphemism for Grandma’s belief in luck and ritual, hints that focusing too much on formal education can lead people to devalue cultural practices less common among educated people.
Themes
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Kim, a skinny little kid, is waiting for Jerome by the front door. Jerome thinks how, by the time he’s an adult, Kim will be a teenager: she’ll be the cause of everyone’s anxiety then, not Jerome. Ma has repeatedly told them that growing up in their neighborhood is “perilous,” a word that Jerome had to look up. Jerome pulls Kim’s hair because he can’t “be good all the time” but then resolves to buy her a book with his allowance.
Jerome has to look up “perilous” to learn that it means dangerous, a detail hinting that he is too young to understand the “perilous” social conditions around him. His claim that he can’t “be good all the time” may foreshadow mischief he’ll commit later, while his resolution to buy Kim a book illustrates that he’s fundamentally good and kind even if he sometimes misbehaves.
Themes
On their walk to school, which is eight blocks, Jerome and Kim walk at an even pace, not drawing attention from anyone who might accost them. Their street, Green Street, has houses both inhabited and abandoned. Unemployed men drink and gamble on the sidewalk. They pass an exploded meth lab and drug dealers, whom they cross the street to avoid. (Jerome has heard Pop say that even though there aren’t enough employment opportunities, it’s wrong to deal drugs because they can kill people.)
The description of Jerome and Kim’s walk to school reveals some of the dangers that make the adults in their family afraid for them: they live in a neighborhood with high unemployment, public substance abuse, and illegal drug businesses, presumably because the family cannot afford an apartment in a safer neighborhood.
Themes
Jerome thinks bullies are worse than drug dealers. To avoid them, he chooses to eat his school lunch outside of the cafeteria. Kim—who knows that bullies target Jerome—takes his hand. When he promises to meet her after school like always, she asks whether he’ll have a good day. Even as he claims he will, he scans the area for his bullies, Eddie, Snap, and Mike. Clever Kim isn’t fooled by Jerome’s reassurances, but she never tattles about his problems. Jerome thinks that since Ma, Pop, and Grandma already know he doesn’t have as many friends as Kim does, they shouldn’t also have to worry about him being bullied.
Neither Jerome nor Kim tells the adults in their family that Jerome is being bullied, because they know the adults are already fearful and don’t want to worry them more. Jerome and Kim’s attempts to protect their adult family members reveal how the difficulties in their lives are causing them to grow up faster than they should have to. Their lies of omission may foreshadow other instances in which they fail to be honest with adults.
Themes
A girl yells Kim’s name. When Jerome nods, Kim runs to join her friend. Then someone says Jerome’s name. He turns and sees Mike smirking at him, while Eddie and Snap make intimidating gestures. Jerome resolves to hide in the bathroom during lunch. He hopes his bullies will forget about him, though he compares the possibility to winning a million-dollar lottery.
Jerome compares having his bullies forget him to winning the lottery, which implies that his bullies never forget to target him. Jerome is being bullied constantly, yet it seems none of the staff at the school have noticed or intervened, perhaps because the school lacks the resources to employ enough staff to supervise all the students adequately.
Themes
