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
“Dear Martin,” Justyce begins, asking why it seems like he must constantly face people who want to “keep [him] down.” On his way home from telling his mother about Yale, he explains, he encountered Trey and a group of Black Jihad members. Trey asked him why he was so happy, and he told him about getting into Yale. “You’ll be back, smart guy,” Trey says. “Once you see them white folks don’t want yo black ass at they table. They not down with you bein’ their equal, dawg. We’ll see you soon.” Justyce tells Dr. King in his diary that he wouldn’t be so upset about this encounter if it hadn’t happened on the same day that Jared also tried to undercut his Yale acceptance. “All this talk about how ‘equal’ things are, yet [Jared] assumed I didn’t do as well as he did?” he writes.
Once again, Justyce finds himself torn between two populations, neither of which seem to want him to succeed. Facing Trey and the other Black Jihad members, he encounters resentment and scorn for his ambition. Then, when he tries to commit himself to attaining upward mobility, he has to endure the entitlement and casual racism of people like Jared, who also resent him, but for different reasons. Consequently, he’s left without a sense of true belonging, stranded between two communities.
Themes
Continuing his epistolary diary entry to Martin Luther King, Jr., Justyce writes, “It’s like I’m trying to climb a mountain, but I’ve got one fool trying to shove me down and another fool tugging at my leg, trying to pull me to the ground he refuses to leave.” He acknowledges that Jared and Trey are “only two people,” but he can’t shake the idea that people like Jared are going to question his qualifications once he arrives at Yale. “How do I work against this, Martin?” he asks, admitting that he feels “defeated.” In a post-script to his entry, he also asks Dr. King how he should navigate “love triangles,” since it’s clear that both SJ and Melo like him.
In this section, readers witness Justyce’s search for guidance and support. He wants to know how someone like Martin Luther King, Jr. would navigate the resentment he’s forced to face from both of the communities to which he belongs. He also wonders how he should deal with his love life. However, he’s only asking these questions in a diary entry, meaning he won’t actually receive any kind of response—he has nobody to guide him.
Themes
