Crime Theme Analysis

One of the most important and most nuanced themes of the book is crime, particularly the sale of illegal drugs (and the various crimes related to their sale). Too often, people portray crime in one of two ways. Either crime is a reflection of the basic inequalities in society, or it’s a reflection of the bad decisions that criminals make. Put another way, crime is either something that criminals are driven to do because they’re desperate (suggesting that they’re the victims of broad societal forces like poverty), or it’s something they entirely choose to do (suggesting, oftentimes, that they’re inherently bad people). The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is about a man who commits many crimes. But it doesn’t simplify the facts by portraying Robert in one of the two stereotypical ways. Robert Peace is a victim in some ways, and in other ways he’s responsible for his bad decisions.

At many points in the book, Jeff Hobbs questions the nature of crime, and portrays crime as a natural, rational response to society’s problems. Robert grows up at a time when Newark is one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the country. People turn to selling drugs, not because they’re immoral but because they see drugs as one of the only good ways to make money. Robert begins selling drugs in part to support to support his beloved mother, Jackie Peace, the woman who’s worked hard for Robert’s entire life to make sure he’s well-fed and gets a good education. For Robert, as with so many others, selling marijuana is a rational thing to do—and furthermore, it’s the compassionate thing to do, since it allows him to take care of Jackie. Hobbs further de-stigmatizes the drug business by questioning whether selling drugs should really be considered a crime at all. Robert sells marijuana, a drug that’s never shown to cause any direct harm to anyone in the book. Selling marijuana is dangerous, of course, but marijuana itself seems perfectly innocent. In this way, Hobbs advances an arguably “liberal” view of crime, premised on the assumption that drug dealers are generally rational, moral people who just want to survive.

But it’s not that simple. Hobbs clearly has a lot of love and respect for Robert, but he refuses to let his old roommate off the hook entirely. Robert isn’t just the victim of economic need and unfair drug laws: he chooses to take outrageous risks, endangering himself and his friends and family, by committing crimes. Even if Robert is partly motivated by economics, his need for money can’t entirely explain why he sells marijuana. Again and again, Robert’s friends tell him that he should move to a new city, get a well-paying job, and make some money. Robert just laughs off this advice, though on some level, he knows his friends are right. Hobbs suggests that Robert enjoys the risks of selling drugs—he even smuggles weed through an airport, a highly risky act that could easily result in his being arrested by the D.E.A. Robert also seems to take pleasure in breaking rules: he’s proud of being smart enough to get away with his crimes.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Robert has always been most comfortable when surrounded by his friends in Newark. It is because he chooses to live in Newark, where economic opportunities are limited, that he makes the further choice to sell drugs to make money. Overall, Robert Peace isn’t just the victim of his own poverty—he’s a smart, mature adult who’s capable of making money in hundreds of different ways, and yet he chooses to make money by breaking the law, endangering his life and the lives of others. This is what makes Robert such a fascinating and frustrating character: he’s so clearly a product of his environment, and therefore not wholly accountable for his actions, and yet also so clearly a product of his own bad choices. Or as one of his classmates puts it, “So fucking smart, but so fucking dumb.”