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Alive (p. 57–59)
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
Sarah. Jerome discovers the Moores’ house and floats into the daughter’s (Sarah’s) bedroom. Though terrified, she holds back a scream and tells Jerome that she saw his photo. When Jerome asks why she sees him, she says she doesn’t know. Jerome admits that being dead is lonely, and the girl, blushing, admits she’s lonely too: her dad (Officer Moore) and her mom are constantly fighting and “sad.” When Jerome points out that they should be sad, Sarah says her dad was frightened. Jerome retorts that he, Jerome, was only playing outside. He thinks that it was a good day; he made a friend, and he got to play outside, something that rarely happened because his parents were afraid of drive-by shootings.
Officer Moore’s daughter is afraid of Jerome—perhaps understandably, as Jerome is a ghost who just floated into her bedroom. Yet unlike her father, who shot Jerome out of racist fear, Sarah controls her fear and tries to interact with Jerome, which suggests she may be less prejudiced than her father. Despite her lack of prejudice, however, she wants to defend her father’s violent act. Jerome, meanwhile, recognizes that he shouldn’t have been shot for playing outside like a normal child.
Themes
The girl (Sarah) says she’s sorry. The apology makes Jerome furious. He thinks that if she weren’t female and he weren’t dead, he’d consider smacking her. Her bedroom, much larger than his, has a bookshelf, a TV, and a computer. Jerome realizes she probably doesn’t hear gunfire near her home. When the girl claims that her father, Officer Moore, is a public servant who helps people because “that’s what policemen do,” Jerome points out that Officer Moore didn’t help him and that everyone where he lives believes that the police behave with total impunity. The girl says her father “upholds the law.” When Jerome responds skeptically, she seems shocked.
Sarah owns several items that Jerome (by implication) doesn’t, including a computer and a bookshelf—hinting that children from privileged families have more access to information and intellectual enrichment than children from poor families. Sarah and Jerome’s different perspectives on law enforcement suggests that the police may treat Jerome’s poor, predominantly Black community very differently than they treat Sarah’s community.
Themes
The girl (Sarah), crying, asks whether she can help Jerome. Then Officer Moore enters the room with “reddened eyes,” tells “Sarah” it’s bedtime, and hugs her hard. When he asks whether she wants to go skating with him the next day, she says yes—but she then asks whether Jerome was really 12. Officer Moore replies that Jerome lived in a dangerous area. When Sarah persists, pointing out that she and Jerome are the same age, Officer Moore retorts that she didn’t see Jerome. Sarah, looking at Jerome, stutters out that he was her height. Officer Moore says she wasn’t there; then he leaves, slamming the door behind him.
Officer Moore’s “reddened eyes” hint that he’s been crying, an indication that he feels guilty for shooting Jerome even as he defends his behavior at the hearing. In response to Sarah’s question about Jerome’s age, Officer Moore claims that Jerome’s neighborhood was dangerous—as if living in a dangerous neighborhood makes a child less of a child. Sarah, seeing Jerome, pushes back against her father’s distorted claims, suggesting that interacting with Jerome helps her to see the truth (that he is just a kid, like her).
Themes
Sarah asks Officer Moore—too late—whether he made a mistake. Jerome tells her that it was no mistake. When Sarah insists it was, Jerome says he’s leaving. She asks him to stay, suggesting that they could be friends. Jerome—who has never had a white girl as a friend—laughs and says that’s an idiotic idea. Sarah says she wasn’t joking and begs him to stay. Jerome, pitying Sarah, says he has to leave. When she asks where he’s going, he realizes that he doesn’t know. He doesn’t even really understand how he travels around as a ghost.
Because Sarah can see Jerome, she is less likely to believe Officer Moore’s biased descriptions of him. Yet unless Jerome had died, the two children likely never would have met: Jerome has never befriended a white girl, presumably in part due to Chicago’s highly racially segregated schools. Thus, the novel implies that de facto segregation in many U.S. school districts hampers progress toward racial justice.
Themes
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Jerome turns to the window and sees the other ghost (Emmett Till) looking up at him from the street. Sarah, crying, asks what it’s like to be dead and whether he’s supposed to move on to another place. The question reminds Jerome of the misery of haunting his family. He contemplates how much more difficult being dead is than he would have expected: “Who knew THE END wasn’t the end?”
“THE END” is a traditional caption at the end of old films. Jerome’s use of it here suggests, grimly, that Jerome’s death won’t be the last time a police officer shoots a Black boy.
Themes
Sarah announces that she hates school. When Jerome asks whether kids bully her—an experience he understands—she tells him that people who disapprove of her dad, Officer Moore, yell things at her, while people who support her dad treat her as if she’s “special” because she’s his daughter, which she finds humiliating. Jerome is horrified that people are hero-worshipping the Moore family. He begins to say, “It’s not—” and Sarah finishes, “Fair.” Jerome, perturbed that she completed his sentence, again says he’s going to leave.
Sarah wants to believe that her father made a bad mistake rather than that he acted maliciously, but she clearly knows her father’s actions were wrong. She shows here that she dislikes the people who yell at her and the people who act like she’s “special” for being related to him because both groups assume that she approves of what her father did. Jerome finds Sarah’s moral clarity and her understanding of him, exemplified by her ability to finish his sentence, disturbing because he associates her with whiteness and specifically with his white murderer. He may have difficulty seeing her as an individual person because he has so little experience with middle-class white children due to de facto segregation in schools.
Themes
Sarah announces that she doesn’t want people to like her because her father (Officer Moore) shot Jerome to death. Jerome notes that Sarah resembles Officer Moore, which makes it hard to look at her. She says that while she loves her father, she has no idea, looking at Jerome, how her father could have shot him. It makes her worry that someone might shoot her. Jerome says that won’t happen: she’s a white girl. When she asks whether that’s the reason, Jerome shrugs, thinking that Pop let him know to be wary of police and white people when he was a little kid.
Pop taught Jerome at a young age that authorities like police officers might hurt him because he is Black. By contrast, white, middle-class Sarah is shocked that anyone would shoot a child. The difference in their perspectives shows that Jerome has not been allowed to retain his childish innocence, the way that Sarah has, due to racism in the U.S.
Themes
Jerome, exhausted, sits on the floor. Sarah says that she must see him for a reason. She sits beside him and speculates that she’s “supposed to help” him. When he asks how she can help, she admits she doesn’t know. Jerome says Grandma thinks he should move on. Sarah asks whether his grandma sees him too, and he explains she just “senses” him. Suddenly, Jerome thinks how wild his and Sarah’s situation is and starts laughing. Sarah starts laughing too—though Jerome suspects they’re only doing so because otherwise they’d be sobbing. Jerome thinks it’s wrong for a ghost to laugh and decides he’d rather never have met Sarah.
Jerome and Sarah laugh at their situation because it is absurd: Sarah seems like the person who is “supposed to help” Jerome because she can see him—but she’s just a child like him, in addition to being his killer’s daughter. What can a child do to address the entrenched racial prejudice that led to Jerome’s death? That is the question that Sarah will have to consider throughout the rest of the novel.
Themes
