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Jeremy Mathis is the White teenager Amal is accused of attacking with a skateboard, leaving him in a coma. Though Jeremy is physically absent for most of the novel, his presence looms large the entire time. He becomes a symbol of everything Amal is up against: a legal system that believes White voices by default and criminalizes Black boys without question. Amal—who may have thrown the first punch, but who certainly did not throw the last—is forced to watch how Jeremy is perceived with sympathy throughout the trial, while he himself is villainized and turned into a monster. Jeremy becomes a tragic victim, and Amal, a cautionary tale. The fact that Jeremy cannot speak means that Amal’s future hangs in limbo, dependent on whether Jeremy will tell the truth if and when he wakes up. When he finally does regain consciousness near the end of the story, everyone involved knows that his words hold the power to either confirm Amal’s innocence or seal his fate. The novel ends before Jeremy gives his statement, an ambiguous ending that asks the reader to reflect on the various potential outcomes.
Jeremy Mathis Quotes in Punching the Air
The Punching the Air quotes below are all either spoken by Jeremy Mathis or refer to Jeremy Mathis. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Pages 3-45 Quotes
So it wasn’t about
who threw the first punch
It was about courts, turf, space
Me and them other boys
were just trying to go home
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Pages 46-93 Quotes
and I thought I won, I had a rep
for being this hard little kid that nobody could mess with
and I didn’t even know how I was supposed to feel—
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Pages 189-231 Quotes
But we lived in the same building I was born in
and paid the same rent my whole life, so we were good
But on the other side, the big houses
(some painted in bright colors, others run-down)
got fixed up nice and painted over in grays and beiges
making that part of our hood look like a futuristic suburb
and soon there were invisible lines we couldn’t cross
like we can’t go where the nice places are
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Pages 232-286 Quotes
But you gotta understand
when one of you fall
everybody falls
or takes the fall
You know what I’m saying?
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Pages 287-342 Quotes
Butterfly, you’d have to promise me
you’ll change them out there, too
It can’t just be me
They gotta be different, too
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Jeremy Mathis Character Timeline in Punching the Air
The timeline below shows where the character Jeremy Mathis appears in Punching the Air. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Pages 3-45
...how deeply he can understand Amal’s reality. The same goes for Ms. Rinaldi, and for Jeremy Mathis, the White boy with whom “this story begins.”
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Black Ink. Amal draws parallels between himself and Jeremy Mathis: he is “ink,” “man,” and “criminal”; Jeremy is “paper,” “boy,” and “victim.” In the...
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Face Painting. When Ms. Rinaldi leaves the courtroom after the prosecutor shows pictures of Jeremy Mathis’s bloodied face, Amal wonders how she could ever think him capable of such violence.
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...stereotype he isn’t. They want him to be the “kid from the hood” who put Jeremy Mathis in a coma—one that Jeremy still hasn’t woken from.
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...count of aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon, his skateboard. He notes that Jeremy’s DNA was never actually found on the skateboard, though.
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Ball Game. Amal learned about self-defense playing basketball on other teams’ turfs. The day Jeremy Mathis ended up in a coma, Amal and his friends had just been trying to...
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...have thrown the first punch, but he didn’t throw the last one—the one that put Jeremy Mathis in a coma.
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Blind Justice. Jeremy’s mother believes Amal’s verdict is justice, but Amal sees a different kind of “justice” at...
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Pages 46-93
...that he will be given neither a life nor death sentence. Amal compares himself to Jeremy Mathis: they’re both stuck in different limbos, both “punching the air” to prove they’re still...
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...the different meanings of the word “book.” He was “booked” after his arrest, and if Jeremy Mathis dies, the judge might “throw the book” at him. Meanwhile, Umi worked as a...
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Pages 94-143
...though he had only ever been in one fight before the night with Omari and Jeremy Mathis.
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...illuminating his sparse environment, the toilet and bed attached to the wall. He wonders if Jeremy Mathis has also woken up.
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Pages 144-188
...White inmates will keep coming after him because of what they believe he did to Jeremy Mathis. Amal notices how divided the facility is, with inmates grouped into cliques. At East...
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Pages 189-231
...Memory. After lights-out, Amal’s thoughts drift to the night of the fight with Omari and Jeremy Mathis. Before Amal’s neighborhood fell victim to gentrification, he and his boys could go anywhere...
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...II. Amal reflects on the contrast in how society sees him and his friends versus Jeremy Mathis and his. He and his boys are labeled “in the wrong,” seen as “a...
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Pages 232-286
Hope III. On Visitors Day, Clyde tells Amal that Jeremy Mathis is improving and could wake up from his coma any day. He says that...
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...as his canvases. He flashes back to the night of the fight with Omari and Jeremy Mathis. After his fight in fifth grade, Umi had enrolled Amal in martial arts classes,...
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Pages 287-342
Still speaking to the butterfly, Amal maintains he isn’t the reason Jeremy Mathis is in a coma. He frames the fight as a long-coming response to the...
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Pages 343-386
...name is never called to the Visiting Room. Instead, Umi calls him. She says that Jeremy Mathis has woken up, and she needs to be there when he speaks for the...
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...it’s an “honor” to represent him, and that she believes he is good. She says Jeremy Mathis wants to talk.
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...construction paper all over the apartment with Umi, coloring outside the lines. Later this week, Jeremy Mathis will give his first statement since coming out of his coma, and Amal feels...
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