Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear Martin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Entitlement, and Implicit Bias
Appearances and Assumptions
Support, Acceptance, and Belonging
Opportunity and Upward Mobility
The Media and Public Discourse
Summary
Analysis
Manny’s parents wait 27 days to have Manny’s funeral, giving Justyce enough time to recover so that he can attend. Sitting at the funeral, Justyce wishes they’d gone ahead and had it without him. Wanting to get up and leave, he realizes that he couldn’t walk away even if he wanted to, since there “are media people everywhere outside.” In the weeks after Manny’s death, the media has begun to “speculat[e]” about what happened, suggesting that he “threatened Garret Tison,” or that he and Justyce “threw something into Tison’s Suburban,” or that Justyce was carrying a gun.
The scene in which Tison shoots Manny and Justyce is narrated from a third-person point of view. This is significant, since Dear Martin contains sections in which Justyce becomes the narrator, recording what has happened in his diary. Consequently, the fact that the shooting is rendered in the third-person erases any uncertainty regarding what happened—readers know for sure that Justyce and Manny did nothing violent or truly threatening that would justify Garrett Tison’s use of a weapon. Readers thus see just how unfair it is that the media has begun to set forth unfounded speculations about the incident and to present Justyce and Manny in a negative light. This is how cultural biases spread, and Stone makes it clear that the narrative surrounding this shooting has already begun to spin out of Justyce’s control.
Themes
At the funeral, Justyce sees SJ and remembers that she came to visit him in the hospital. She stood next to his bed and held his hand, weeping the whole time. He also spots Jared and Manny’s other white friends at the funeral, and he suddenly feels incensed when Jared turns around and looks him in the eyes. At the same time, though, he sees that Jared’s eyes are “haunted,” realizing that he’s “feeling the same way” as him. This realization only makes him angrier.
It’s apparent that SJ still cares for Justyce, but the awkwardness in their relationship unfortunately estranges her from him so that she can’t give him the support he needs in this moment. Jared’s sadness at Manny’s funeral is worth keeping in mind as the novel progresses, since his friend’s death ultimately changes the way he thinks about race relations in the United States.
Themes
After the funeral service, Justyce walks to the bathroom and encounters SJ. Just as they begin to talk, he tells her that he misses her, but then his mother appears. When he introduces SJ to her, she curtly says hello. Taking the hint, SJ leaves them alone, and Justyce’s mother asks with a concerned look on her face how he knows her. “I saw how she was looking at you,” she says, but Justyce asks her not to start this conversation at Manny’s funeral. Still, she says, “Just sayin’ watch yourself with that one.” This makes him want to tell her that SJ has helped him “believe he was big while everyone else wanted to keep him small,” but he doesn’t say anything.
Justyce’s relationship with SJ doesn’t give him the support he needs because they haven’t fully worked out what, exactly, they mean to one another. To make things even more complicated, his mother discourages him from dating her, effectively cutting him off from one of the only people who might lend him a sense of comfort and resilience in this time of hardship.
Themes
When Justyce and his mother leave the church, they find themselves flanked by reporters. “What’s it like knowing it could’ve been YOU in that casket?” one asks. “Do YOU have to be such an asshole, man?” Justyce replies, but his mother tells him not to say anything else, informing the reporters that he has no further comments.
In his brief interaction with the reporters outside Manny’s funeral, Justyce sees just how eager people in the media are to exploit his experience in order to get a compelling sound bite or story. It’s clear from this reporter’s insensitive question that Justyce’s emotions don’t factor into the media’s treatment of what happened.
Themes
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