Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Nickel Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Repression
Unity, Support, and Hope
History, Secrecy, and Racism
Civil Rights, Dignity, and Sacrifice
Power, Fear, and Upward Mobility
Summary
Analysis
Unable to work the electronic kiosks at the airport, Turner makes his way to the counter and checks himself in for his flight to Tallahassee, telling the clerk that his name is Elwood Curtis. Two weeks after he escaped from Nickel, a waitress in a diner asked Turner his name, and he immediately said, “Elwood Curtis.” He has used the name ever since, thinking of it as a tribute to his friend.
In the first scene of the epilogue, Whitehead addresses any questions readers might have about what really happened to Elwood, making it clear that the boy did indeed die and that Turner is the one who survived. Because he wanted to honor his friend, though, Turner has taken Elwood’s name. By living his adult life under Elwood’s name, then, he pays a secret tribute to his past and to the most painful memory of his life. In this way, he manages to address his trauma and keeps it close to him every day, without ever having to actually talk about what happened at Nickel.
Themes
News of Elwood’s death made its way into the local press at the time, but the story favored Nickel, depicting Elwood as nothing more than a dangerous runaway. After hiding in railroad yards for several nights, Turner took a train north and made his way to New York City. Then, in 1970, he returned to Florida and obtained a copy of Elwood’s birth certificate, then applied for a Social Security card several years later. He has been Elwood Curtis ever since—until now, that is. Last night, he gave Millie two articles about the discovery of Nickel’s graveyards, and when she failed to see the relevance, he told her that this is where he lived as a teenager. Going on, he told her his entire story, spending hours crying with her and trying to explain the details.
When Turner tells Millie about his time at Nickel, he finally confronts the painful memories he has kept hidden ever since he escaped. This suggests that, though it’s possible to make it through life without addressing trauma, it eventually becomes too burdensome and emotionally fatiguing to keep this kind of pain a secret.
Themes
Turner has been living as Elwood for decades, wanting to live a life that would make his friend proud. This is because he knows Elwood would tell him that he has to learn how to truly live, not just survive. As Turner tells his story to Millie, she suddenly understands certain aspects of his personality, like why he has so much scorn for police officers and authority figures, and why dark moods often overcome him without warning. She briefly wonders who he really is, but she knows he’s still the same person she fell in love with. What’s more, she realizes that she understands some of his pain, since she grew up as a black person in the United States, making her no stranger to discrimination.
Turner’s desire to live a life that would make Elwood proud underlines just how profoundly Elwood’s death has impacted Turner’s entire trajectory. When Whitehead suggests that Turner has to learn how to do more than simply survive, he implies that holding on to trauma can actively keep people from reaching their full potential. This, it seems, is why Turner decides to tell Millie about what happened to him, and though she can’t fully relate to everything he says, she can at least empathize with the racism he has faced, fully aware herself of what it’s like to experience bigotry and hatred. In this regard, she’s able to support Turner even if she herself has never undergone the kind of trauma that he’s had to endure. Connection with others, Whitehead suggests, is crucial for processing trauma, even if the traumatic experience itself was a very isolating one.
Themes
Like Turner, Millie has to face prejudice on an everyday basis. Indeed, she undergoes “routine humiliation[s]” that remind her of what it was like to grow up in segregated Virginia. Also like Turner, she tries to ignore these things, since she believes that she might lose her mind if she didn’t. Still, she’s shaken by the fact that she doesn’t even know her husband’s real name, he tells her that his name is Jack Turner. In response, she says that he has to tell her his entire story and that this conversation will take longer than one night.
Millie’s understanding of what it’s like to experience “routine humiliation[s]” as a black person in the United States is important, since it enables her to connect with Turner’s pain and support him on an emotional level. In keeping with this, she tells him that he has to tell her all of his story, demonstrating that she sees his trauma not as a burden, but as something that she can help him process. It’s also significant that Millie’s experiences of racism, while not as dramatic as Turner’s, are in some ways just as affecting in that they’ve shaped her life profoundly. Whitehead seems to argue here that all forms of racism have devastating effects, even when the stories behind them are more mundane than the story of Nickel Academy.
Themes
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Turner has decided to return to Nickel for the first time. He admits to Millie that he doesn’t know what will happen, unsure whether or not he’ll be arrested for having escaped. No matter what happens, he has decided to go back, though he thinks about how he wishes he never delivered Elwood’s letter. This makes him think about Elwood’s strong ideas about morality and his belief that humans are capable of changing for the better—beliefs that ultimately led to his death.
After all this time, Turner still maintains his skepticism regarding Elwood’s strong moral convictions. Although he briefly adopted Elwood’s worldview when he dared to help his friend escape, this mindset was only temporary—after all, his actions only led to the death of his best friend, no doubt discouraging Turner once again and squashing any ideas he may have cultivated about his power to address injustice. And yet, he himself managed to escape, implying that although taking a stand against immorality will sometimes lead to disaster, it will also sometimes lead to positive change.
Themes
In the last several years, Turner has learned that Nickel buried dead students as quickly as possible to avoid official investigations. He has also learned that Elwood’s grandmother died just one year after her grandson, and though Elwood’s mother is presumably still alive in California, Turner has decided to be the one to properly bury his friend. After arriving in Tallahassee, he plans to attend a press conference the next morning, when the sheriff of Eleanor will talk about what has been found in the grave sites. A group of the White House boys are going to testify at this event, since they want the state to formally apologize and build a memorial. Although Turner used to think that these men were “pathetic” for still complaining about what happened to them so many years ago, he now thinks that he’s the “pathetic” one for trying to ignore his emotions.
After years of repressing his memories of Nickel and of Elwood, Turner finally seeks closure. The media’s focus on Nickel seems to have awoken a desire in him to shatter the secrecy that made the institution so powerful. This is why he wants to revisit the school and find Elwood’s body, grasping that the only way to restore justice to his friend will be by making his story known. As a result, he no longer thinks of his peers as “pathetic” for talking about their trauma, realizing that this is exactly what he should be doing, too.
Themes
The White House boys at the press conference are all white, so Turner has come to speak out for the black boys. Whatever happens to him, he’s determined to find Elwood’s grave so that he can tell his friend about his life and how it was affected by his death. Moreover, he’s ready to talk about what happened to him and to Elwood to whomever is willing to listen.
That the White House boys are all white suggests that Turner lives in a society in which it’s easier for white people to speak up about their trauma than it is for black people. This is largely because the United States still holds tight to certain prejudices, ultimately choosing to believe white people more readily than black people when it comes to stories of abuse and mistreatment. Once again, then, a sense of secrecy keeps the world from fully grasping what happened to boys like Turner and Elwood. Accordingly, Turner decides to speak for the many black boys who were mercilessly killed and beaten in the shadows of a racist, corrupt institution. Making these stories known, readers see, is the only kind of justice available to these unfortunate souls, and one of the most powerful ways to keep similar cruelty from continuing in the future.
Themes
Turner books a room at The Radisson in Tallahassee. It’s an old building that has been renovated, but the ground floors have remained somewhat the same. That night, he goes to the hotel restaurant, and a hostess tells him to sit wherever he wants. As he waits for a server to come by, he reads the menu, learning that the hotel is a Tallahassee landmark formerly known as the Richmond Hotel. Sitting there at the table, he doesn’t recall that Elwood once told him that he used to sit in the kitchen of this very hotel and read comic books, just waiting to see a black customer in the dining room.
In the novel’s final scene, Turner sits in the very same dining room that Elwood used to fantasize about as a boy. From the kitchen, young Elwood always hoped to catch a glimpse of a black person sitting down at one of the restaurant tables—a vision of equality and desegregation that he never got to witness. Now, though, Turner unknowingly fulfills Elwood’s wish. In this manner, Whitehead implies that although the United States still struggles with racism and bigotry, the country has made some progress through the sacrifices of people like Elwood, even if that progress seems small in the face of continued injustices.
Themes
