Fear Theme Analysis

Fear is a natural emotion that everyone feels sometimes—but because fear involves implicit belief about the world, Ghost Boys suggests that it is important for people to analyze their fear and overcome it if it is motivated by false, prejudiced beliefs. The novel’s inciting incident is the death of Jerome Rogers, a 12-year-old Black boy who lives in a dangerous Chicago neighborhood. A white policeman, Officer Moore, shoots Jerome to death while Jerome is playing outside with a toy gun. Afterwards, at a preliminary hearing to determine whether Officer Moore will be charged with murder, Officer Moore testifies that he shot Jerome because he was “in fear for [his] life,” having perceived short, skinny Jerome as a large, threatening adult man brandishing a deadly weapon at him. Jerome, haunting the hearing, at first believes that Officer Moore is lying. As he watches Officer Moore and listens to more of his testimony, however, Jerome comes to realize that Officer Moore is telling the truth: this armed, adult police officer with a gun really was afraid of a small Black boy with a toy. Yet while Officer Moore truly felt fear, his fear was based on implicit beliefs and misperceptions motivated by racist stereotypes: that Black children are more adult-like than other children, that Black men are inherently dangerous, and so on. Toward the novel’s end, Officer Moore’s daughter Sarah—horrified by her father’s racist, fatal mistake—starts a website to spread accurate information about Black children murdered due to racist fear; she hopes that correcting people’s false beliefs will make them less afraid and so reduce racist violence. Through Sarah’s website, the novel suggests that perhaps the false implicit judgments that cause racist fear can be corrected through education and understanding.