The Nickel Boys

by

Colson Whitehead

Maynard Spencer Character Analysis

Maynard Spencer is the superintendent of Nickel Academy. A severe man, he has no problem beating and even killing students who don’t obey his every word. In keeping with this, Spencer is the one who severely whips Elwood after Elwood tries to break up a fight between Corey, Black Mike, and Lonnie. Later, Spencer tells Griff to intentionally lose against Big Chet in the school’s annual boxing championship. When Griff fails to do so, Spencer and his crony, Earl, take Griff to the horse stables behind the school and beat him to death in the middle of the night. Because of this kind of behavior, Elwood fears Spencer on a visceral level, though this doesn’t stop him from delivering a note to government inspectors about Nickel’s gross injustices. When Spencer discovers this, he takes Elwood back to the White House for another whipping, then puts him in solitary confinement for three weeks even though the school isn’t allowed to isolate students in this manner. When it becomes clear that nobody from the government is going to hold Spencer accountable for what happens to Elwood, he decides to take him “out back” and kill him, but Turner helps him escape before this can happen.

Maynard Spencer Quotes in The Nickel Boys

The The Nickel Boys quotes below are all either spoken by Maynard Spencer or refer to Maynard Spencer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Trauma and Repression Theme Icon
).
Chapter Six Quotes

Corey got around seventy—Elwood lost his place a few times—and it didn’t make sense, why did the bullies get less than the bullied? Now he had no idea what he was in for. It didn’t make sense. Maybe they lost count, too. Maybe there was no system at all to the violence and no one, not the keepers nor the kept, knew what happened or why.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Maynard Spencer, Lonnie, Earl, Corey, Black Mike
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Ten Quotes

The blinders Elwood wore, walking around. The law was one thing—you can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people. In Tampa, Turner saw the college kids with their nice shirts and ties sit in at the Woolworths. He had to work, but they were out protesting. And it happened—they opened the counter. Turner didn’t have the money to eat there either way. You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other. Nickel was racist as hell—half the people who worked here probably dressed up like the Klan on weekends—but the way Turner saw it, wickedness went deeper than skin color. It was Spencer. It was Spencer and it was Griff and it was all the parents who let their children wind up here. It was people.

Which is why Turner brought Elwood out to the two trees. To show him something that wasn’t in books.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Griff
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:

Elwood frowned in disdain at the whole performance, which made Turner smile. The fight was as rigged and rotten as the dishwashing races he’d told Turner about, another gear in the machine that kept black folks down. Turner enjoyed his friend’s new bend toward cynicism, even as he found himself swayed by the magic of the big fight. Seeing Griff, their enemy and champion, put a hurting on that white boy made a fellow feel all right. In spite of himself. Now that the third and final round was upon them, he wanted to hold on to that feeling. It was real—in their blood and minds—even if it was a lie.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

He was all of them in one black body that night in the ring, and all of them when the white men took him out back to those two iron rings. They came for Griff that night and he never returned. The story spread that he was too proud to take a dive. That he refused to kneel. And if it made the boys feel better to believe that Griff escaped, broke away and ran off into the free world, no one told them otherwise, although some noted that it was odd the school never sounded the alarm or sent out the dogs. When the state of Florida dug him up fifty years later, the forensic examiner noted the fractures in the wrists and speculated that he’d been restrained before he died, in addition to the other violence attested by the broken bones.

Related Characters: Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twelve Quotes

It wasn’t Spencer that undid him, or a supervisor or a new antagonist […], rather it was that he’d stopped fighting. In keeping his head down, in his careful navigation so that he made it to lights-out without mishap, he fooled himself that he had prevailed. That he had outwitted Nickel because he got along and kept out of trouble. In fact he had been ruined. He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Fourteen Quotes

“You’re getting along. Ain’t had trouble since that one time. They going to take you out back, bury your ass, then they take me out back, too. The fuck is wrong with you?”

“You’re wrong, Turner.” Elwood tugged on the handle of a weathered brown trunk. It broke in half. “It’s not an obstacle course,” he said. “You can’t go around it—you have to go through it. Walk with your head up no matter what they throw at you.”

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis:
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Maynard Spencer Quotes in The Nickel Boys

The The Nickel Boys quotes below are all either spoken by Maynard Spencer or refer to Maynard Spencer. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Trauma and Repression Theme Icon
).
Chapter Six Quotes

Corey got around seventy—Elwood lost his place a few times—and it didn’t make sense, why did the bullies get less than the bullied? Now he had no idea what he was in for. It didn’t make sense. Maybe they lost count, too. Maybe there was no system at all to the violence and no one, not the keepers nor the kept, knew what happened or why.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Maynard Spencer, Lonnie, Earl, Corey, Black Mike
Page Number: 68
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Ten Quotes

The blinders Elwood wore, walking around. The law was one thing—you can march and wave signs around and change a law if you convinced enough white people. In Tampa, Turner saw the college kids with their nice shirts and ties sit in at the Woolworths. He had to work, but they were out protesting. And it happened—they opened the counter. Turner didn’t have the money to eat there either way. You can change the law but you can’t change people and how they treat each other. Nickel was racist as hell—half the people who worked here probably dressed up like the Klan on weekends—but the way Turner saw it, wickedness went deeper than skin color. It was Spencer. It was Spencer and it was Griff and it was all the parents who let their children wind up here. It was people.

Which is why Turner brought Elwood out to the two trees. To show him something that wasn’t in books.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Griff
Page Number: 105
Explanation and Analysis:

Elwood frowned in disdain at the whole performance, which made Turner smile. The fight was as rigged and rotten as the dishwashing races he’d told Turner about, another gear in the machine that kept black folks down. Turner enjoyed his friend’s new bend toward cynicism, even as he found himself swayed by the magic of the big fight. Seeing Griff, their enemy and champion, put a hurting on that white boy made a fellow feel all right. In spite of himself. Now that the third and final round was upon them, he wanted to hold on to that feeling. It was real—in their blood and minds—even if it was a lie.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

He was all of them in one black body that night in the ring, and all of them when the white men took him out back to those two iron rings. They came for Griff that night and he never returned. The story spread that he was too proud to take a dive. That he refused to kneel. And if it made the boys feel better to believe that Griff escaped, broke away and ran off into the free world, no one told them otherwise, although some noted that it was odd the school never sounded the alarm or sent out the dogs. When the state of Florida dug him up fifty years later, the forensic examiner noted the fractures in the wrists and speculated that he’d been restrained before he died, in addition to the other violence attested by the broken bones.

Related Characters: Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twelve Quotes

It wasn’t Spencer that undid him, or a supervisor or a new antagonist […], rather it was that he’d stopped fighting. In keeping his head down, in his careful navigation so that he made it to lights-out without mishap, he fooled himself that he had prevailed. That he had outwitted Nickel because he got along and kept out of trouble. In fact he had been ruined. He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Fourteen Quotes

“You’re getting along. Ain’t had trouble since that one time. They going to take you out back, bury your ass, then they take me out back, too. The fuck is wrong with you?”

“You’re wrong, Turner.” Elwood tugged on the handle of a weathered brown trunk. It broke in half. “It’s not an obstacle course,” he said. “You can’t go around it—you have to go through it. Walk with your head up no matter what they throw at you.”

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis: