Genre
Middle-Grade Fiction
Setting and Context
The novel is set in an impoverished Black neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois.
Narrator and Point of View
The narrator is Jerome Rogers; the point of view stays with him.
Tone and Mood
The tone is matter-of-fact and reflective; the mood moves between despairing and poignant.
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Jerome; the primary antagonists are Officer Moore and the bullies Eddie, Snap, and Mike.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is that Jerome struggles to find purpose as a ghost after a white police officer fatally shoots him.
Climax
The story reaches its climax when Jerome accepts his role as a storyteller and comprehends the importance of "bearing witness" to bring about a more peaceful world.
Foreshadowing
An instance of foreshadowing occurs when Carlos insists that Jerome take his toy gun after school. Carlos says, "It'll be fun. You can scare the bad guys." Later, Officer Moore testifies he had to shoot Jerome because Jerome was "scary."
Understatement
When Jerome attends his own wake, he sees his family's apartment is packed full of people and comments, "If everyone wasn't so sad-faced, I'd swear it was a party." With this understatement, Jerome uses humor to cut against the grim mood and present the situation as being less important than it really is.
Allusions
Throughout the novel, Rhodes alludes to the real-life figures of Emmett Till and Tamir Rice, both of whom were Black boys whose unjust deaths have been attributed to systemic racism.
Imagery
An example of auditory imagery occurs when Emmett Till discusses his appreciation of baseball, saying, "Crack—I loved the sound of the bat hitting the ball."
Paradox
When Jerome laments the fact he is stuck being a ghost without a clear purpose, he comments, "Who knew THE END wasn't the end." The statement speaks to Jerome's paradoxical predicament in which death doesn't bring about the cessation of consciousness.
Parallelism
An example of parallelism (successive use of identical verbal constructions) occurs when Jerome sees the thousands of ghost boys appearing outside Sarah's window. He comments, "A shadow. Then, another. And another. Another and another."
