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Alive (p. 9–16)
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
Ghost. Jerome’s family’s apartment is full of food, extended family members, and Reverend Thornton. It looks like a celebration, except everyone is miserable. When Jerome tries to take some cornbread, his hand phases right through it. As he wanders the living room, he notices that although people can’t see him, they make room for him, never letting him phase through them. He likes that they give him space.
Jerome’s childlike behavior—trying to take some food, even though he’s dead—emphasizes the tragedy of his early death, as does the obvious misery of the people at his wake.
Themes
Ma is lying with “swollen eyes” on Jerome’s basketball-themed sheets in his room. Grandma is holding Ma’s hand “like she’s a little girl.” Ma’s misery makes Jerome want to break something. Through the doorway, he sees Kim reading, which is what she does to comfort herself when she hears gunshots or neighbors fighting. Jerome is disoriented that his bedroom—where he used to dream about a future as a college basketball player, a soldier, a rapper, or the president—feels like it no longer belongs to him.
Ma lies in a child’s bed while her own mother, Grandma, holds her hand “like she’s a little girl.” These details emphasize that Jerome’s early death was unnatural and should not have happened: a child shouldn’t die before his mother, so grief over Jerome’s death has returned his mother to an unnaturally childlike state. Jerome’s memories of his childhood aspirations emphasize that his future has been stolen: he will never grow up to be any of the things he dreamed about.
Themes
Jerome sees Pop with his eyes closed, shrinking into a corner. He wonders who his father will play basketball with or watch Chicago Bears games with now. Jerome tries to tell his family that he’s “still here.” Though Ma and Pop seem lost in misery, Grandma looks toward Jerome and nods. Then Reverend Thornton enters the bedroom and suggests praying. Pop suggests that prayer is useless because Jerome will never return to them. When Ma, shocked, reminds Pop that they don’t know “God’s will,” Pop retorts that it was an idiotic policeman’s “will” that murdered Jerome. Furious, Pop punches a wall.
When Jerome says that he’s “still here,” Grandma nods—hinting that she can sense him in some way. When Pop insists that a policeman’s will, not God’s, caused Jerome’s death, it makes clear that Jerome’s death was not inevitable: if the policemen on the scene had made different choices, Jerome would be alive.
Themes
Reverend Thornton says that Jerome is “in a better place.” Jerome wonders whether that’s true. Grandma—over Ma and Reverend Thornton’s objections—suggests that Jerome’s spirit could still be with them, claiming that all Black Southerners know spirits exist. Jerome tells Ma that he’s in the room, but Ma, crying, just says that his burial is tomorrow. Pop declares that he’ll sue. Grandma says that Jerome is “just like Emmett Till,” also from Chicago. When Reverend Thornton tells her it’s no longer 1955, Pop says Jerome is like Tamir Rice, a boy from Cleveland killed in 2014 “just because he’s black.” Pop says that white men have been murdering Black people since slavery. Ma hugs him and they cling to each other. Jerome, miserable, wonders where his body is now.
Jerome has mentioned that Ma dislikes Grandma’s “Southern ways,” implicitly because these ways make Grandma seem uneducated. Yet Grandma is right while Reverend Thornton and Ma are wrong, which indicates that while formal education is valuable, it may not teach everything. Emmett Till (1941—1955) was a 14-year-old Black boy murdered by two white men in 1955 for interacting with a white woman at a grocery store. Tamir Rice (2002—2014) was a 12-year-old Black boy shot to death by a police officer in Cleveland in 2014 because the officer mistook Rice’s toy gun for a real firearm. The comparisons made between Emmett Till, Tamir Rice, and Jerome suggest that racist violence has not declined in the U.S. since segregation as much as people like to think.
Themes
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Suddenly, Jerome hears a voice say: “Time to wake up.” He wanders around the apartment looking for the voice’s owner. In the kitchen, he finds a Black boy (later revealed to be Emmett Till) who looks a little like him: they’re the same height, with similar short haircuts. The boy’s mournful, world-weary expression frightens Jerome. The boy nods to Jerome and vanishes; out the window, Jerome sees him on the far sidewalk, looking “wispy.” He wonders whether the boy is a ghost too.
The phrase “Time to wake up” invites a figurative reading: the speaker is inviting Jerome to “wake up” to some greater knowledge or consciousness. The other ghost that Jerome encounters looks like him, which may symbolize that they both died due to racist violence—symbolism emphasizing that Jerome’s death is part of a racist pattern in U.S. history.
Themes
Church. Jerome haunts the apartment, watching his family. Ma seems like a “sleepwalk[er],” while Pop makes furious calls to lawyers and journalists. At night, Ma sleeps in Jerome’s room. Kim—who always sleeps on the couch—has bad dreams, while Grandma stays awake to avoid dreaming. Pop sleeps covering his eyes. Jerome wonders whether he’s supposed to travel somewhere—heaven, for example. He feels confused and powerless, unable to move on or comfort anyone. Grandma seems to know he’s there, but she can’t see him. He misses her ordering him to do chores, like she did before he died.
Pop’s calls to lawyers suggests that he still hopes the law will help get justice for Jerome, even though a law enforcement professional is the one who killed Jerome. Jerome’s feelings of confusion and of being stuck emphasize that his early death was unnatural: having been killed as a child and prevented from growing up, he feels frozen in time, a condition symbolized by his inability to travel to an afterlife.
Themes
The day of his funeral, Jerome joins his dressed-up family for the drive to church. In the car, Ma comments on the open casket and tries to remember what Emmett Till’s mother said: “‘I want the whole world to see what they did to my boy.’” As the family exits the car at church, Grandma whispers to Jerome that he should “move on”—but Jerome doesn’t know how or where to go.
Fourteen-year-old lynching victim Emmett Till’s mother famously demanded an open casket at his funeral. Photographs of his brutalized body, published in newspapers, horrified large swathes of the public and helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement (1954—1968). That Ma is loosely quoting Emmett Till’s mother more than 60 years after Emmett Till’s death shows how little progress the U.S. has made in addressing racist violence against Black children. Grandma’s whisper to Jerome, meanwhile, emphasizes her ability to sense him.
Themes
Jerome’s friend Carlos tries to get Pop’s attention on the church steps. Pop, tending to a miserable Kim, doesn’t notice, but Grandma beckons Carlos over. Carlos, crying, hands her a piece of paper. After looking at it, Grandma gives him a hug, “the kind she used to give [Jerome] when she was happiest.” As the church doors open, Grandma’s favorite song “Amazing Grace” starts playing. Carlos runs away, wearing only a hoodie despite the snow.
The hymn “Amazing Grace” was written by John Newton (1725—1807), a former slave trader who eventually became an abolitionist. The hymn “Amazing Grace” suggests that people who have done evil things can change. In the context of Jerome’s funeral, it may foreshadow that the police officer who shot Jerome will regret his actions. At this point, the novel does not reveal what is on the paper that Carlos gives Grandma, but her joyous reaction—at a funeral—suggests that it is emotionally impactful.
Themes
Jerome’s family enters the church. Jerome moves to follow them—until the other ghost (Emmett Till) appears and warns him that he doesn’t want to witness the service. When Jerome asks who the other ghost is, the ghost replies, “Someone I wish you didn’t know.” Jerome notices that the ghost’s clothes are old-fashioned. The ghost declares that he is Jerome; then he vanishes. Jerome stays outside on the church steps, wondering what Carlos gave Grandma that gave her brief joy at her grandson’s funeral.
The ghost’s old-fashioned clothes suggest that he has been dead a long time, while his claim that he is Jerome suggests that they died under comparable circumstances. When the ghost “wish[es]” that Jerome didn’t know him, meanwhile, it implies that the ghost has approached Jerome specifically because Jerome is a Black child who has been killed by a police officer—a circumstance that the other ghost regrets.
Themes
