The Nickel Boys

by

Colson Whitehead

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Themes and Colors
Trauma and Repression Theme Icon
Unity, Support, and Hope Theme Icon
History, Secrecy, and Racism Theme Icon
Civil Rights, Dignity, and Sacrifice Theme Icon
Power, Fear, and Upward Mobility Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Nickel Boys, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Unity, Support, and Hope Theme Icon

In The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead emphasizes the capacity of friendship and interpersonal support to sustain people facing adversity and oppression. intense hardship. The power of this kind of compassion becomes evident early in the novel, when Elwood receives encouragement from people like Mr. Marconi (his white employer) and Mr. Hill (his high school teacher). When he’s wrongfully arrested and sent to Nickel Academy, though, Elwood no longer has access to adult role models willing to guide and support him. As a result, it is his friendship with Turner that emotionally sustains him, even if this sustenance is subtle and small in the face of Nickel Academy’s all-consuming terror. And though the rest of the Nickel Boys don’t always do much to help one another withstand the school’s bigotry and aggression, the mere idea of silent camaraderie helps buoy Elwood and gives him the courage to fight for a better reality—a fact that illustrates the fortifying powers of unity and companionship.

Before attending Nickel Academy, Elwood’s primary difficulties have to do with racism and segregation. Thankfully, he manages to find people who encourage him to advocate for and believe in himself. For instance, his new history teacher, Mr. Hill, tells him and the other students at the beginning of the year to go through their textbooks and erase the racial slurs that white students have graffitied into the margins. Mr. Hill is an activist who tells Elwood about the Civil Rights Movement, and when Elwood sees him at a protest in front of a movie theater, Mr. Hill invites him to stand with him, making him feel suddenly less alone. This simple action helps Elwood see the point of standing up against injustice as a unified group, feeling as if he’s fighting not just for himself, but for everyone in the United States. “My struggle is your struggle,” he thinks, “your burden is my burden.” The fact that Elwood draws this message of unification and camaraderie from Mr. Hill’s acceptance is worth noting, since it underlines just how inspiring it is for disenfranchised young people to find compassion, support, and guidance.

Of course, Mr. Hill’s support means little after Elwood is sent to Nickel Academy, having been falsely accused of stealing a car. Worse, there are no positive role models at Nickel, where the educators are apathetic and the staff is unspeakably abusive. It’s not long before Spencer—the school’s vicious superintendent—whips Elwood’s legs to shreds, forcing him to spend many days in the infirmary. As he waits for his legs to heal, Elwood talks to Turner, who’s also in the infirmary. Elwood insists that they should stick up for themselves, but Turner dismisses this idea, saying that such efforts are even more ineffective at Nickel than they are in the outside world. It’s worth noting the stark contrast between Mr. Hill’s optimism and Turner’s cynicism regarding social justice and change. Whereas Mr. Hill makes Elwood feel as if he and his comrades are capable of realizing their human rights, Turner insists that racist authorities make it impossible for people like him or Elwood to fight injustice. In response, Elwood says that Turner only thinks this in this cynical manner because he doesn’t have anybody supporting him in the outside world, and Turner agrees that this assessment is accurate. This idea suggests that isolation and a lack of support leads to hopelessness, a point Turner admits is true. At the same time, though, Turner says that just because he’s cynical doesn’t mean he can’t recognize the way the world really works.

Because Nickel is a violent environment, the students are forced to put their own safety first. In fact, the only reason Elwood got whipped in the first place is because he tried to save a younger boy from two bullies—an attempt that only resulted in his own punishment. This is Turner’s second stay at Nickel, so he has learned to look out only for himself. In turn, he advocates for a fierce kind of individualism, telling Elwood, “Nobody else is going to get you out—just you.” This notion stands in stark contrast to Mr. Hill’s message of collective social advocacy and the compassion of the Civil Rights Movement. And yet, the idea also addresses an unfortunate truth: Elwood will be safest if he keeps to himself.

Despite Turner’s insistence that it’s best to operate alone at Nickel, he develops a strong friendship with Elwood, a bond that eventually convinces him to take a stand against his oppressors. When the boys hear that the government will be visiting the school for an inspection, Elwood writes a letter outlining the institution’s acts of violence and abusive policies. At first, Turner refuses to take part in Elwood’s plan to deliver the letter to one of the inspectors, but when Elwood’s chance to hand it to one of the white men disappears, Turner takes the letter from his friend and promises to deliver it himself. Then, when Spencer discovers this and puts Elwood in solitary confinement, Turner busts him out in the middle of the night, helping him run away even though he previously swore he would never take anyone with him on an escape. As they run off campus, Elwood asks why Turner’s breaking his own rule, and Turner says, “You’re dumb, and I’m stupid,” acknowledging that, although he knows it’s risky for two students to escape at once, he’s no longer willing to operate as the staunch individualist Nickel has forced him to be. Instead, he stands with his friend, yet another indication that camaraderie and support lead to a sense of hope, since Turner is finally doing something to fight the injustice keeping him down. It is this gravitation toward camaraderie that later bonds an entire generation of former Nickel Boys, who create online support groups and work together to make sure the rest of the country hears about the terrible things that took place at Nickel Academy. In this sense, then, unity continues to be a source of resistance, one that brings people together and inspires them to think optimistically about their ability to address injustice.

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Unity, Support, and Hope ThemeTracker

The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Unity, Support, and Hope appears in each chapter of The Nickel Boys. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
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Unity, Support, and Hope Quotes in The Nickel Boys

Below you will find the important quotes in The Nickel Boys related to the theme of Unity, Support, and Hope.
Prologue Quotes

Together they performed their own phantom archaeology, digging through decades and restoring to human eyes the shards and artifacts of those days. Each man with his own pieces. He used to say, I’ll pay you a visit later. The wobbly stairs to the schoolhouse basement. The blood squished between my toes in my tennis shoes. Reassembling those fragments into confirmation of a shared darkness: If it is true for you, it is true for someone else, and you are no longer alone.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Two Quotes

The morning after the decision, the sun rose and everything looked the same. Elwood asked his grandmother when Negroes were going to start staying at the Richmond, and she said it’s one thing to tell someone to do what’s right and another thing for them to do it. She listed some of his behavior as proof and Elwood nodded: Maybe so. Sooner or later, though, the door would swing wide to reveal a brown face—a dapper businessman in Tallahassee for business or a fancy lady in town to see the sights—enjoying the fine-smelling fare the cooks put out. He was sure of it.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Harriet (Elwood’s Grandmother)
Page Number: 18
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Three Quotes

He hadn’t marched on the Florida Theatre in defense of his rights or those of the black race of which he was a part; he had marched for everyone’s rights, even those who shouted him down. My struggle is your struggle, your burden is my burden.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Related Symbols: Martin Luther King At Zion Hill
Page Number: 37
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Seven Quotes

“It’s not like the old days,” Elwood said. “We can stand up for ourselves.”

“That shit barely works out there—what do you think it’s going to do in here?”

“You say that because there’s no one else out there sticking up for you.”

“That’s true,” Turner said. “That doesn’t mean I can’t see how it works. Maybe I see things more clearly because of it. […] The key to in here is the same as surviving out there—you got to see how people act, and then you got to figure out how to get around them like an obstacle course. If you want to walk out of here.”

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Harriet (Elwood’s Grandmother)
Page Number: 82
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Ten Quotes

Elwood frowned in disdain at the whole performance, which made Turner smile. The fight was as rigged and rotten as the dishwashing races he’d told Turner about, another gear in the machine that kept black folks down. Turner enjoyed his friend’s new bend toward cynicism, even as he found himself swayed by the magic of the big fight. Seeing Griff, their enemy and champion, put a hurting on that white boy made a fellow feel all right. In spite of himself. Now that the third and final round was upon them, he wanted to hold on to that feeling. It was real—in their blood and minds—even if it was a lie.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 112
Explanation and Analysis:

He was all of them in one black body that night in the ring, and all of them when the white men took him out back to those two iron rings. They came for Griff that night and he never returned. The story spread that he was too proud to take a dive. That he refused to kneel. And if it made the boys feel better to believe that Griff escaped, broke away and ran off into the free world, no one told them otherwise, although some noted that it was odd the school never sounded the alarm or sent out the dogs. When the state of Florida dug him up fifty years later, the forensic examiner noted the fractures in the wrists and speculated that he’d been restrained before he died, in addition to the other violence attested by the broken bones.

Related Characters: Maynard Spencer, Griff, Big Chet
Page Number: 114
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Twelve Quotes

It wasn’t Spencer that undid him, or a supervisor or a new antagonist […], rather it was that he’d stopped fighting. In keeping his head down, in his careful navigation so that he made it to lights-out without mishap, he fooled himself that he had prevailed. That he had outwitted Nickel because he got along and kept out of trouble. In fact he had been ruined. He was like one of those Negroes Dr. King spoke of in his letter from jail, so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that they had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Page Number: 154
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Thirteen Quotes

It was funny, how much he had liked the idea of his Great Escape making the rounds of the school. Pissing off the staff when they heard the boys talking about it. He thought this city was a good place for him because nobody knew him—and he liked the contradiction that the one place that did know him was the one place he didn’t want to be. It tied him to all those other people who come to New York, running away from hometowns and worse. But even Nickel had forgotten his story.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Chickie Pete
Page Number: 168
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter Fourteen Quotes

But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom.

The capacity to suffer. Elwood—all the Nickel boys—existed in the capacity. Breathed in it, ate in it, dreamed in it. That was their lives now. Otherwise they would have perished. The beatings, the rapes, the unrelenting winnowing of themselves. They endured. But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap? We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Related Symbols: Martin Luther King At Zion Hill
Page Number: 172
Explanation and Analysis:

“You’re getting along. Ain’t had trouble since that one time. They going to take you out back, bury your ass, then they take me out back, too. The fuck is wrong with you?”

“You’re wrong, Turner.” Elwood tugged on the handle of a weathered brown trunk. It broke in half. “It’s not an obstacle course,” he said. “You can’t go around it—you have to go through it. Walk with your head up no matter what they throw at you.”

Related Characters: Elwood Curtis, Jack Turner , Maynard Spencer
Page Number: 174
Explanation and Analysis: