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Chapter 24
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sun Does Shine, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Discrimination and the Criminal Justice System
Optimism, Faith, and Choice
The Death Penalty
Suffering, Community, and Support
The Power of Stories
Summary
Analysis
In the Afterword, Ray lists the name of every single person on death row in the United States as of November 2018, which is 2,813 names in total. On the list, 1 out of every 10 people is innocent. He asks if we can judge who deserves to live and who deserves to die: if 1 out of every 10 planes crashed, we would stop all flights and fix the planes. The justice system is equally broken. He tells readers to read the names out loud, and after every 10th name, say, “Innocent.” The death penalty is broken, he writes, and we have to take a stand against that injustice. You’re either part of the death squad or you’re banging on the bars.
The Afterword is Ray’s powerful plea to end the death penalty. He not only uses his own story to show how the criminal justice system can be biased, but he then extrapolates using statistics to show the scale and the stakes of errors like the ones made in his case. His final line is an appeal to people to acknowledge the problems with the death penalty and actively stand against it.
Themes
