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Alive (p. 35–44)
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
Preliminary Hearing. Chicago Courthouse. April 18. Four months after Jerome’s death, he’s in the courthouse, still trapped haunting his family. Ma, Grandma, and Pop sit behind the prosecutor. At the defense lawyer’s desk sit a miserable-looking white woman and a white girl (later revealed to be Sarah). Journalists, police officers, Reverend Thornton, and other community members are also present, but there are no jurors. The judge, a short woman with pink nail polish, announces that the preliminary hearing will determine whether there’s enough evidence for Officer Moore to stand trial for murder, not whether he’s innocent or guilty. Jerome thinks this is stupid, since he’s obviously dead.
Everyone knows that the policeman, Officer Moore, shot Jerome. Thus, Jerome thinks that trying to determine whether enough evidence exists to accuse Officer Moore of murder is ridiculous: Officer Moore killed him, so it’s obvious to Jerome that Officer Moore committed murder.
Themes
A policeman (Officer Moore) sits in the dock, staring at his wife and daughter (Sarah), ignoring the lawyer asking him questions. The lawyer regains Officer Moore’s attention and asks him whether he feared for his life and whether he was surprised to learn that Jerome’s gun was a toy. Officer Moore says yes: Jerome was threatening him with the gun. Jerome, walking closer to Officer Moore, wonders why he’s lying. Suddenly, Officer Moore’s daughter, looking fearful, points at Jerome. Jerome wonders whether the girl fears him the way Officer Moore did. The girl’s mother pushes her hand down.
Officer Moore shot Jerome because he misperceived a toy gun Jerome was holding for a real firearm—a clear parallel to the case of 12-year-old Tamir Rice, mentioned earlier in the novel, who was shot in Cleveland in 2014 when a police officer mistook his toy gun for a real firearm. By paralleling Jerome’s killing with Tamir Rice’s, the novel suggests a pattern: some police officers misperceive Black boys engaging in normal childhood behavior as dangerous. When Jerome wonders whether Officer Moore’s white daughter is afraid of him too, it indicates that he’s conscious of the racial dynamics in his killing.
Themes
The lawyer asks how old Jerome was. When Officer Moore says he thought Jerome was a “man” of at least 25, the lawyer asks whether he was distressed to discover that Jerome was 12. Officer Moore says it shocked him because Jerome was “hulking. Scary.” The lawyer asks whether Officer Moore felt Jerome was a threat. Officer Moore pauses, looking at his family, while his daughter stares at Jerome. Then he says that he did feel “threatened.”
Officer Moore’s claims that Jerome looked like a “hulking” and “scary” “man” exemplify racist stereotypes about Black boys as larger, more dangerous, and somehow more adult than other children. Notably, that Officer Moore felt “threatened” by Jerome doesn’t mean that Jerome was objectively a threat: Officer Moore’s descriptions of Jerome suggest that racism influenced his perceptions of Jerome, causing him to be irrationally fearful.
Themes
Pop, jumping to his feet, questions how a boy could be threatening to two armed, adult police officers. The judge demands silence. When an attendee shouts, “Black lives matter!”, Grandma shouts that “Jerome mattered” and was a “good boy.” The judge demands order, while security guards advance on Pop and Ma. Journalists yell at Officer Moore, asking whether he’s “sorry.” Jerome wonders what difference it makes whether Officer Moore or anyone else is sorry. Suddenly, Officer Moore’s daughter (Sarah) is right next to Jerome, saying that she sees him. Jerome, angry, wonders why she can see him when Kim can’t.
Pop is essentially asking why two armed men were afraid of a child. The question implies that their fear was irrational and thus undermines Officer Moore justifying shooting Jerome by insisting he was afraid. Black Lives Matter is a social movement that coalesced around the killings of several unarmed Black children and young adults killed by authorities, including Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. When an attendee at the hearing shouts, “Black lives matter!”, it indicates that the public sees Jerome’s shooting as another example of law enforcement killing Black boys due to racist biases. Grandma’s assertion that Jerome was a “good boy” suggests she’s afraid that people may try to blame 12-year-old Jerome for his killing by painting him as a budding criminal, which occurred in the case of Michael Brown.
Themes
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