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Chapter Ten
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Nickel Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Repression
Unity, Support, and Hope
History, Secrecy, and Racism
Civil Rights, Dignity, and Sacrifice
Power, Fear, and Upward Mobility
Summary
Analysis
Elwood is smoking a cigarette on a windowsill in his New York City apartment. It is summer, and the heat is bearing down on the city. Worse, there is a garbage strike, meaning that the streets are piled high with trash. Denise, his girlfriend, tells him she’s going out to get ice, making her way downstairs and through the trash. Garbage strikes make Elwood think of when he first moved to the city in 1968, since he came in the middle of a strike. When he first arrived, he made his way from Port Authority to a dirty “flophouse” on 99th Street. Settling in, he he decided to clean the place because nobody else was willing to do the work.
In this section, Whitehead jumps forward in time, giving readers a glimpse of what life is like for Elwood after Nickel Academy. At this point, it’s unclear what has happened in the intervening years; the only thing that seems obvious is that he managed to find his way out of the school. Furthermore, the fact that he lived in a “flophouse” when he first came to New York City is worth noting, since it suggests that his time at Nickel severely altered the trajectory of his life, considering that he was a college-bound student before attending Nickel. If he hadn’t been sent to Nickel, readers might think, he probably would never have found himself living in such a run-down, dirty building.
Themes
When Denise returns with the ice, she massages Elwood’s back, which hurts because he’s a professional mover. Denise and Elwood met when Elwood was taking night classes at a nearby high school, earning his GED because he never had the chance to finish high school after Nickel. Denise taught English as a Second Language in the school at the same time. When Elwood finished his final class, he walked over to her classroom and asked her out, but she declined because she was in a relationship. A month later, she called and asked him out. Now, Denise complains about the garbage strike, insisting that the sanitation employees should get back to work. Elwood, on the other hand, thinks it’s “good for the rest of the city to see what kind of place they [are] really living in. Try his perspective for a change.”
Readers don’t yet know much about this version of Elwood, other than that he lives in New York and works as a professional mover. The fact that he didn’t earn his GED until he was a full-grown adult is a testament to just how thoroughly Nickel delayed his actual education, even though it was supposedly a school. Rather than giving him an opportunity to earn a degree, the institution used him for labor. This is most likely why he has apparently adopted a cynical attitude, one that makes him suspicious of how most people view reality. When Denise complains about the garbage strike, for example, he thinks about how it’s “good for the rest of the city to see what kind of place” they’re living in, a thought that underlines his belief that New York City—or perhaps the entire country—is an essentially dirty, rotten place.
Themes
Recently, Elwood bought a van and decided to start his own moving company. He has decided to call the company Ace Moving, since he wants it to be listed at the top of the phonebook. Six months after making this decision, he realizes that he subconsciously chose the name Ace because it’s a reference to his time at Nickel Academy.
That Elwood doesn’t initially realize why he wants to name his company Ace is significant, since it suggests that he has repressed all thoughts pertaining to his time at Nickel Academy. Rather than immediately recognizing that becoming an Ace is something he’s apparently still striving for, he thinks that he’s choosing the title for practical, unemotional reasons. When it dawns on him that this isn’t the real reason, though, it becomes impossible for him to deny the fact that his traumatic memories are still informing the way he lives his life.
Themes
