A Hope in the Unseen

by

Ron Suskind

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on A Hope in the Unseen makes teaching easy.

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Chapter 1 Quotes

I worked hard. Why should I be ashamed? Ashamed to claim credit for something I earned? I hate myself for not going.

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker), Mr. Clarence Taylor
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

Educators have even coined a phrase for it. They call it the crab/bucket syndrome: when one crab tries to climb from the bucket, the others pull it back down. The forces dragging students toward failure—especially those who have crawled farthest up the side—flow through every corner of the school. Inside the bucket, there is little chance for escape.

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 17
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Faith is taking the last $10 from your checking account and saying, ‘God, I give this to you, because I have nothing but faith, I live on faith, and I know in my heart that you’ll bring it back to me in ways too grand and too many for me to even imagine.’”

Related Characters: Bishop Long (speaker), Cedric’s Mother / Barbara Jennings
Page Number: 30
Explanation and Analysis:

“How can I compete? It’s like I’m living in a refrigerator!”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker), Cedric’s Mother / Barbara Jennings
Page Number: 39
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

“Hebrews 11:1. ‘The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen.’”

Related Characters: Mr. Clarence Taylor (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 49
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’re low, you’re tired, you’re fighting, you’re waiting for your vision to become reality—you feel you can’t wait anymore! […] Say ‘I’ll be fine tonight ‘cause Jesus is with me.’ SAY IT! SAY IT!”

Related Characters: Bishop Long (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Related Symbols: The SAT
Page Number: 75-76
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 4 Quotes

“You sure talk funny, southern, sort of, and you know, slangy.”

“For reeeal? What, like I’m slurring my words or something? […] You mean, I guess, that I talk sort of ‘ghetto.’”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker)
Page Number: 81
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 5 Quotes

I hope you are as pleased to get this letter as I am to send it to you. You have been admitted to the 232nd class to enter The College of Brown University.

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Related Symbols: The SAT
Page Number: 111
Explanation and Analysis:

“I said to myself, ‘THERE IS NOTHING ME AND MY GOD CAN’T HANDLE.’”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker)
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 6 Quotes

The problem stems from a conundrum he’s thought through a thousand times. Worldly success—the kind of genuine, respect-in-the-community, house-in-the-suburbs achievement that he finds among his neighbors in Mitchelville—has never fit well inside the doors of Scripture. And going to college is a first step on that path away from here.

Related Characters: Bishop Long (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 151
Explanation and Analysis:

“Come on now, I know Ballou. Some guys in the joint came from Ballou, and I have a cousin who’s a teacher there. Ballou’s no place for students.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 158
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

“I just feel I need to figure out where I stand. I don’t want to get in over my head […] Well, I didn’t come from that good a school and all, a really bad city school.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker)
Page Number: 173
Explanation and Analysis:

“Your identity, I think, should be something that you are proud of. I wouldn’t be proud to say that I had only one leg and I could just barely walk, you know, on one leg. That may be true, but I wouldn’t let it define who I was.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker)
Page Number: 177
Explanation and Analysis:

Cedric, ushered here mostly by adrenaline and faith, realizes he’s now facing a living, breathing, credentialed counterpart to his revered Bishop. Nothing theoretical about it. Around here, nothing is exempt from dissembling questions and critical examination—not even religion itself. He can see Bishop’s one eye, looking through him, and hear the words, “The only true answers lie with God.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings, Bishop Long
Page Number: 186
Explanation and Analysis:

He reminisces for a while and throws out a few light aphorisms before turning bleak and discussing Bosnia and balkanism, victims of wars, and conflicts around the globe. “Unless one wants to lie,” he says […] “I am rarely truly hopeful.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 187
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

By now, he understands that Maura knows what to write on her pad and the sleepers will be able to skim the required readings, all of them guided by some mysterious encoded knowledge of history, economics, and education, of culture and social events, that they picked up in school or at home or God knows where.

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 190
Explanation and Analysis:

“Are we doing a services to young people to boost them above their academic level and then not offer the services they need? Because, who really can? Who can offer that sort of enrichment? You can hardly blame the university. It would take years, and money, and a whole different educational track to bring some affirmative action students to a level where they could compete.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 192
Explanation and Analysis:

“I am constantly having to play catch-up with guys who’ve spent the past five years speaking three languages, visiting Europe, and reading all the right books. Here, at Brown, they say ‘Don’t worry, you’re all equal, starting on the same footing. Ready, set, go!’ They just don’t get it. Where I come from, people don’t go to France to study. A trip to France is a big deal. I haven’t been reading all the right books since I was twelve and then have some Rhodes Scholar Daddy tell me the rest. I didn’t have that kind of access, access that could empower me.”

Related Characters: Stephan Wheelock (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 193
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

It’s exciting to work with a kid who is so devoid of irony, so unguarded. And also terrifying. While it’s not going to be easy to get him where he needs to be academically, Cedric simply can’t afford to fail. He’s got everything—God, mother, faith—riding on making it. The thought makes her short of breath.

Related Characters: Helaine Schupack (speaker), Cedric Jennings, Donald Korb
Page Number: 242
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 11 Quotes

“You don’t understand anything, LaTisha. He’s saying you take care of yourself. All right?”

“It don’t matter how you look, Cedric—it’s what’s inside, the spirit in you. That’s what matters, that’s what matters!”

“Listen to me! He’s saying you don’t let yourself go! All right?! You make yourself look as good as you can! You hear me? What I’m telling you—you just don’t let yourself go!”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker), LaTisha Williams (speaker)
Page Number: 271
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 12 Quotes

“You know […] I can tell the ones that will die when they leave here, when they leave this school. I can see them. You look at them hard enough, long enough, and you can tell. You really can.”

Related Characters: Mr. Fleming (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 283
Explanation and Analysis:

“If you’re going to make it here, Cedric, you’ll have to find some distance from yourself and all you’ve been through. The key, I think, is to put your outrage in a place where you can get at it when you need to, but not have it bubble up so much, especially when you’re asked to embrace new ideas or explain what you observe to people who share none of your experiences.”

Related Characters: Larry Wakefield (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 303
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

“Like, no one in the unit knows anything about Keith Sweat. It’s kind of nice, you know. You have to be real. You have to have grown up with it like us, to really know it.”

Related Characters: Chiniqua Milligan (speaker), Cedric Jennings
Page Number: 315
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Quotes

“I still believe in God, that Jesus is my personal savior, and my friend, and my guide, but I just don’t feel as tied to the church so much anymore. I like coming and all, but, at the same time, I feel like I’m ready to venture out.”

Related Characters: Cedric Jennings (speaker), Bishop Long
Page Number: 358
Explanation and Analysis:
No matches.