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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Milkshake:
In Chapter 10, Stevenson tells the story of a client named Avery Jenkins, who asks Stevenson for a chocolate milkshake every time he sees him. After a racist White prison officer has a change of heart and gets Avery a milkshake himself, the milkshake becomes a metaphor:
Avery never again asked me for a chocolate milkshake. We won a new trial for him and ultimately got him off death row and into a facility where he could receive mental health treatment. I never saw the officer again; someone told me he quit not long after that last time I saw him.
Avery is mentally disabled, and it is difficult for him and Stevenson to communicate. As hard as Stevenson is working on Avery's case, he has the sense that the most meaningful gesture he could make would be to get his client the milkshake. Stevenson has tried to do exactly that, but he is never allowed to bring the milkshake into the prison.
Meanwhile, both Stevenson and Avery have been dealing with a racist White prison guard. The man subjects Stevenson to a humiliating strip search and threatens him, so Stevenson worries about the kind of violence Avery might be enduring at his hands. On the day of Avery's appeal, Stevenson is especially nervous when he sees that this is the man who has driven Avery to court. What might he do to Avery on the relatively unsupervised drive? Stevenson makes his argument, emphasizing the abuse Avery endured in a string of foster homes when he was a child. Avery does not need prison, he tells the court, but rather treatment in a mental health facility.
After the hearing and back at the prison, Stevenson once again runs into the racist guard. Now, however, the guard seems completely changed. He confesses that he, too, grew up in foster care and was touched by the things Stevenson said in court. He felt so moved, in fact, that he broke protocol to buy Avery a milkshake on the way back to the prison. Even more amazingly, the guard is said to quit soon after this interaction. Stevenson does not seem to know exactly where he goes. He allows the reader to imagine that the guard leaves this line of work altogether, no longer needing the comfort of a job where he exerts control over others. It is as though a bottomless pit of pain has finally been filled in: just as the single milkshake is enough to satisfy Avery, the guard is finally satisfied by Stevenson's argument that abuse survivors deserve help. The metaphor of the milkshake helps demonstrate the power of small acts of mercy or kindness. These small gestures from others help Avery and the guard more than they were ever able to help themselves through larger acts of violence and control.
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